Finished the third story last night (and the essays). I loved it! This one starts super weird and ends up in familiar territory, quite the opposite of the two stories that came before. It also had a happy ending I suppose, unless we think of sad little Jack left behind waiting for his mate. I was very surprised that, while I was first totally weirded out by crawling humans eating off the ground, I was totally okay with the idea of them being beloved pets 
What strange worlds 今村 夏子 creates! She’s an absolutely brilliant author, and I always find it funny how in her essays she always talks about how worthless everything she writes seems to her, and how difficult it is for her to write anything worthwhile. 
Catching up a little bit, but I’m halfway through the second story.
Will post thoughts when I’ve finished too.
For 木になった亜沙、
Definitely very fairytale vibes (so far second story is too).
Felt so bad for 亜沙 by the third or fourth time people refused her food 
Also, when she was konbini chopsticks in bag with bento etc., the narrator kept saying 最後に and I was so expecting that she’d get thrown out immediately.
A couple of questions I have,
When the reform school guy said to 亜沙、「君の手はきれいすぎる」
Was he being creepy?
That’s would be my initial reaction, but afterwards 亜沙 seemed to be happily doing her volunteering etc.
Also, this sentence slightly confused me:
[みんなそれぞれに、主に子供時代に、亜沙が味わってきたような感覚を味わい、味わい続け、そして死んでいった人たちだ。
I read this as something like:
They all, each in their own way, had experiences like Asa’s, mainly from childhood, which they continued experiencing until their death.
Does this mean they all died and got reincarnated into their objects?
I initially thought Asa had just passed out and woken up as a tree, rather than died and got reincarnated.
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It does say quite clearly that 亜沙は人生を終えた。 so I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.
I didn’t take it like that, although it was certainly a weird thing to say. I think 亜沙 took it as a compliment. What I think it might mean was that her hands hadn’t been dirtied by being used (in transactions with other people?), they were “virgin” hands, so to speak. In contrast, at the end of the story her hands (such as they were) were very dirty.
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Ah thank you! I must have glossed over that, that makes sense.
Yeah she seemed quite happy with it. I guess in this fairytale world everyone’s prone acting a bit weird, it certainly wasn’t the weirdest thing that happened!
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Story two spoilers:
I took getting hit and the entire story to be a metaphor for any kind of situation you can find yourself in where you feel like an other…You could apply a number of different lenses to it as well, such as neuro-divergence, looking different from others around you, having a disability, having a difference background, etcetera. Just as an example, if you are, say, neuro-divergent in some way, you may notice you have different situational outcomes than the children around you, but perhaps the realization isn’t one of not belonging. Nami only realizes that the cheers of her classmates mean “Hurry up and get hit”, “Hurry up and end up in a good place like us where you get your favorite drinks and snacks” when she is an older child approaching adolescence. The realization is that she is actually missing something that everyone else appears to have and that “having” is equated with belonging and participating. When she gets older, belonging and participating means being a functioning member of society and holding down a job, which she fails at. That is not to say that anyone who is neuro-divergent or otherwise like from the cases I will end up homeless, though. 
(If anyone who was different as a child went on to become homeless, we’d have lots of homeless people on the earth!!). I think fundamentally the story is just getting at the painfulness that can sometimes accompany not belonging, and that feeling seen and understood, even if only by one person, can have a big impact.
今村夏子s debut work, こちらあみ子 | L28, also features a young girl who is different from everyone around her. It is quite different in tone from the rest of her books and doesn’t have any of the surreal or weird stuff, but I found 的になった七味 to be very thematically similar to it, and keep pondering both… 
I like how even though you can read it seriously, the story was still super bizarre and something you could also easily call a fairy tale. It’s almost like a cautionary tale - “If you become too obsessed with being hit, some day you’ll turn into a target!”. Maybe we will turn into books one day because we enjoy reading them too much?
Ok, time to read the third story!
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Yes, it seems that is what happened. They all became objects so that they could live their best lives and finally do what they always wanted to for others!
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Now I am also done with the third story!
Short, but a pleasant little read! Also weird as hell! It felt like a cursed version of Cinderella or something.
You are forgetting to mention that they also use a cat litter box for going to the bathroom!
I wonder what Jack is doing now. I would have enjoyed reading about their happy marriage. 
The hardcover does not have any essays in it, so that’s the end of the line for me unfortunately! But I thoroughly enjoyed reading this! 
I have now also read all of 今村夏子s books and can make my official ranking! 
- こちらあみ子 (this has to be number one, it’s in my top five favorite books of all times!)
- むらさきのスカートの女
- 父と私の桜尾通り商店街
- 木になった亜沙
- あひる
- とんこつ Q & A
- 星の子
Yay! 
Often when I read too many of an author’s books, I start to enjoy their work less since themes begin to overlap and feel similar, but I enjoyed all of the 今村夏子 books I read so far. Even though some are exploring the same themes, they’re all different and entertaining enough to keep me hooked and coming back to her world again and again. 
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I’ve finished story two now, so I’ll add my thoughts! (at the moment this is a bit of a bundle of unconnected small thoughts)
I definitely agree with bungakushoujo on parallels between the stories.
I felt like story 1 started with 亜沙 being ‘different’ from everyone else, and her story was an upward journey of finding her purpose, and her companions who were similarly ‘different’.
Other the other hand, story 2 started with 七味 being ‘different’, but her story was a downward spiral as she didn’t find her companions or purpose. (Even her son seemed more concentrated on his girlfriend rather than his mother).
I do think both, in a fairytale way, highlight how alienating/tough a path there is for neurodivergent people. Story 2 definitely felt like we were falling further and further away from stable life. Despite the few well meaning people, soceity in general felt geared against 七味.
With the second story, I do feel less satisfied with it as a whole.
Partly this was just because it felt a lot bleaker, but I also felt like there were a lot of characters who felt a bit unexplained or 1-dimensional.
Especially たくや君, but also Nanao’s girlfriend and even Nanao.
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And also finished story 3!
I enjoyed it a lot. A nice combination of a relatively standard plot, but with plenty of weirdness thrown in.
Reminded me a lot of the french novel Le Grand Meaulnes about a boy who finds his love in a countryside estate, but afterwards can never find it again.
In the essays of むらさきのスカートの女 , 今村夏子 talked about her most productive writing spot was at a Doutor (or other coffee chain, I forget). I find it funny to imagine her writing all these offbeat worlds at such an ordinary place.
I’m not sure if I’ll read the essays, so that’s probably all from me.
It was nice to read along with people,
thanks @omk3 & @bungakushoujo !
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Thank you for joining! It was nice to have you! 
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I finished this book last night (it’s one of two I wanted to get done before the end of the year), so here are my one line takes on the stories:
- Story 1: I liked this, especially after the mid-story twist.
- Story 2: I really didn’t like this. The first part was retreading the same ground as story one, the middle part dragged, and the whole story was just way too long. I ended up skipping ahead to story 3 about 20 or 30 pages in, and came back to finish it later.
- Story 3: this was good, and I thought the author captured the way that dreams can seamlessly mix up the completely bonkers with totally normal details and with fragments from other contexts.
- Essays, diary, etc: nothing that particularly stayed in my mind, but I read these as rewards for having managed to slog through another 10 or 20 pages of story 2.
Also, you can interpret the first two stories as having the rather twisted message that if you feel different and isolated from other people then you should prefer to die quickly, because you’ll be happy once you do die and until then you’re just going to have a miserable time :-/
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