My thoughts on ふたえ
I’m going to be honest and say I’m not sure what to make of it.
It’s my first time reading Junko Takase, and I know her novel 「おいしいごはんが食べられますように」(already in my TBR pile for this year) won an Akutagawa for the way she was able to write unspoken, in-between the lines social interactions.
I don’t know if that’s what I failed to pick up from her short story, but I feel like I completely missed something. So the story is just going to end like that? “I went to Tokyo and my dad had plastic surgery. I had to help him out for a day after, but beside that it was a nice trip”.
I somewhat related with the premise of the story: almost 10 years ago I told my own mother I was going to get my nose done, expecting her to react negatively and tell me all sorts of things, but instead she told me she herself has been wanting to do the same since she was in middle school, and would do the surgery with me if she was any younger. It threw me off almost as much as it threw off the protagonist off the story, and that’s why it was my first pick.
The author introduced so many other interesting elements and… I just feel like the story ended without doing much with them.
I’d love to hear someone else thoughts on this, because seriously, what did I miss?
