おらおらでひとりいぐも Informal Book Club

Welcome to the おらおらでひとりいぐも informal bookclub!

おらおらでひとりいぐも won the Akutagawa Literary prize in 2017 and features an elderly narrator, making it perfect for the “retired character” bingo square!

Japanese blurb

〈あいやぁ、おらの頭このごろ、なんぼがおがしくなってきたんでねべが〉

昨年度の文藝賞を受賞した若竹千佐子の『おらおらでひとりいぐも』は、主人公桃子さん74歳の、内面から勝手に湧きあがってくる東北弁の声ではじまる。

24歳の秋、桃子さんは東京五輪のファンファーレに背中を押されるように故郷を離れ、身ひとつで上京。それから住みこみで働き、美男と出会って結婚し、彼の理想の女となるべく努め、都市近郊の住宅地で2児を産んで育て、15年前に夫に先立たれた。ひとり残された桃子さん、息子と娘とは疎遠だが、地球46億年の歴史に関するノートを作っては読み、万事に問いを立てて意味を探求するうちに、自身の内側に性別も年齢も不詳の大勢の声を聞くようになった。それらの声は桃子さんに賛否の主張をするだけでなく、時にジャズセッションよろしく議論までする始末。どれどれと桃子さんが内面を眺めてみれば、最古層から聞こえてくるのは捨てた故郷の方言だった。

桃子さんの人生は戦後の日本女性の典型かもしれないが、他人が思うほど悪いものではない。最愛の夫を喪ったときに根底から生き方を変え、世間の規範など気にせず、〈おらはおらに従う〉ようになったのだ。話し相手は生者とは限らない。そんな〈幸せな狂気〉を抱えて桃子さんは孤独と生き、未知の世界へひとりで行こうとしている。

日々を重ねなければ得られない感情には、〈悲しみがこさえる喜び〉もあるのだ。63歳の新人作家は三人称と一人称が渾然一体となった語りを駆使し、その実際を鮮やかに描いてみせた。お見事!

We will be reading this informally, which means you can join any time and read at whatever pace suits you. When you comment, make sure to use spoilers and to always mention up to where you’ve read (chapter, subchapter, page or percentage), so that other readers know when it’s safe to open spoilers.

Discussion Rules

  • Please mention which short story/section your comment is meant for.
  • Please use spoiler tags liberally, both for referring to the book’s contents and for speculation of your own. Label your spoilers accordingly so that people know when it’s safe to view them.
  • When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!

Member List

  • Yes!
  • Maybe, but 東北弁 scares me
  • No
0 voters
東北弁 日本語
何如 どうしようか
おら わたし/僕
おめ お前
だべ でしょう
4 Likes

@Biblio @d4zai @Belerith I am shamelessly tagging you because you registered on Natively that you own this book (back in 2022-2023 even!). Do you want to read it with us? :grin:

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Thx for the tag, yes, indeed, I would like to read it with you guys. It’s relatively short, so I am happy to squeeze it in between some other stuff I should be reading. :sweat_smile:

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Thank you for the tag! I don’t think I’d be able to regularly follow a schedule right now, but I’m happy to read along with an informal club. :blush:

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There won’t be any schedule, so feel free to join in when you can at a pace that works for you :slightly_smiling_face:

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do we have a start date? :thinking:

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I will personally be starting next week but feel free to start whenever it works for you! :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m also starting next week. Was thinking to go with an “informal schedule” of reading 1 chapter per week, but let’s see, I guess it depends on how difficult or easy it will feel!

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I will start next month as well - still need to buy the book but want to push the purchase into April, plus I want to finish one other book before starting (for a change :innocent:).

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I’m starting to see why it’s hard to finish books, when there are so many book clubs :sweat_smile:

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Alright it’s rough right from the start :smiley:
@bungakushoujo what do you think of having a vocabulary spreadsheet? Or a wiki post?
Thinking I’m going to try to collect the Tohoku terms somewhere, so might as well share them
First ones:
何如 = どうしようか
おら=わたし
おめ=お前

3 Likes

Good idea!! I made the first post into a wiki so we can start a table there. I am going to start this evening!

I noticed the audiobook is included in the audiobook.jp 聴き放題 right now so I will listen to the audio as I read. That usually kind of helps me with dialects…:sweat_smile:

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Thanks! I’ve added a simple table for now, feel free to change it move it if there’s a more appropriate place! We’ll see how it goes, the first sentences are pretty scary, not sure if I can handle the whole book if it will always be like that :x (also I’ve tried internet searching but not finding any good resource with examples so I’m just guessing from context / machine translation, there might be mistakes)

1 Like

Finally found a nice link: 私たちが分からなかった東北弁 | Kokoro VJ

1 Like