Born in 1964, BANANA YOSHIMOTO is the author of Kitchen, N.P., Lizard, and Amrita. Her writing has won numerous prizes around the world. Smashing Pumpkins Unplugged Rarity. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto - review 'They tried to be happy to overcome everything. That was the most precious thing in the story!'

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart. In a whimsical style that recalls the early Marguerite Duras, 'Kitchen' and its companion story, 'Moonlight Shadow,' are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a very special writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul. Read an Excerpt KITCHEN By BANANA YOSHIMOTO GROVE PRESS Copyright © 1988 Banana Yoshimoto All right reserved.

ISBN: 0-8021-4244-3 Chapter One KITCHEN The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in.

Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! I love even incredibly dirty kitchens to distraction-vegetable droppings all over the floor, so dirty your slippers turn black on the bottom. Strangely, it's better if this kind of kitchen is large. I lean up against the silver door of a towering, giant refrigerator stocked with enough food to get through a winter.

When I raise my eyes from the oil-spattered gas burner and the rusty kitchen knife, outside the window stars are glittering, lonely. Now only the kitchen and I are left. It's just a little nicer than being all alone. When I'm dead worn out, in a reverie, I often think that when it comes time to die, I want to breathe my last in a kitchen.

Whether it's cold and I'm all alone, or somebody's there and it's warm, I'll stare death fearlessly in the eye. If it's a kitchen, I'll think, 'How good.' Before the Tanabe family took me in, I spent every night in the kitchen.

After my grandmother died, I couldn't sleep. One morning at dawn I trundled out of my room in search of comfort and found that the one place I could sleep was beside therefrigerator. My parents-my name is Mikage Sakurai-both died when they were young.

After that my grandparents brought me up. I was going into junior high when my grandfather died. From then on, it was just my grandmother and me. When my grandmother died the other day, I was taken by surprise. My family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by, but when it suddenly dawned on me that I was all alone, everything before my eyes seemed false. The fact that time continued to pass in the usual way in this apartment where I grew up, even though now I was here all alone, amazed me. It was total science fiction.

The blackness of the cosmos. Three days after the funeral I was still in a daze. Steeped in a sadness so great I could barely cry, shuffling softly in gentle drowsiness, I pulled my futon into the deathly silent, gleaming kitchen. Wrapped in a blanket, like Linus, I slept.

The hum of the refrigerator kept me from thinking of my loneliness. There, the long night came on in perfect peace, and morning came.

I just wanted to sleep under the stars. I wanted to wake up in the morning light. Aside from that, I just drifted, listless. Beatles Best Selection Rarest on this page. I couldn't exist like that.

Reality is wonderful. I thought of the money my grandmother had left me-just enough. The place was too big, too expensive, for one person. I had to look for another apartment. There was no way around it. I thumbed through the listings, but when I saw so many places all the same lined up like that, it made my head swim. Moving takes a lot of time and trouble.