Review
Revenge is a collection of 11 short stories that only one word could describe best--weird. Although each individual piece tells a different story told from the perspective of a different person (and can pretty much stand on its own), you'd really soon find out that all of these pieces are connected in a way that transforms this little book from a collection of short stories into something that kind of makes up a short novel but not exactly. Each next piece in this book tells a story that is somehow related to an event and/or person mentioned in the previous tale, and by the end of the book you realize that it all goes back to the beginning, creating a perfect circle.
I really liked the way these dark tales were told--being short, there really isn't enough space for bullshit, so everything is pretty much to the point and, believe me when I say, it gets weirder and weirder with every page. Still, Yōko Ogawa managed to be descriptive enough without overdoing it, and to fit in enough details so that the reader can actually feel the atmosphere of the small world she creates in the story (although by the last page, all these "small" worlds feel like pieces of a puzzle that fit perfectly together and create a bigger picture of what kind of place...the real world is). I wouldn't necessarily describe this book as a compilation of horror stories, at least not horror in the way I perceive this notion, but there was indeed a lot of darkness. Still, I'd highly recommend this to people who enjoy the macabre and would like to experience a different kind of short-storytelling.
I really liked the way these dark tales were told--being short, there really isn't enough space for bullshit, so everything is pretty much to the point and, believe me when I say, it gets weirder and weirder with every page. Still, Yōko Ogawa managed to be descriptive enough without overdoing it, and to fit in enough details so that the reader can actually feel the atmosphere of the small world she creates in the story (although by the last page, all these "small" worlds feel like pieces of a puzzle that fit perfectly together and create a bigger picture of what kind of place...the real world is). I wouldn't necessarily describe this book as a compilation of horror stories, at least not horror in the way I perceive this notion, but there was indeed a lot of darkness. Still, I'd highly recommend this to people who enjoy the macabre and would like to experience a different kind of short-storytelling.
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