A Japanese take on fear and obsession

FICTION: The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen SnyderHarvill Secker, 164pp, £10,00

THE IMAGINATION IS strange, at times terrifying because it has a will of its own. Try as you can, you can never quite control its fears and obsessions. Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa gives a master class in each of the three pieces gathered in this remarkable volume.

Her female narrators are all caught in the role of witness; yet while two of them are observers engaged in the process of attempting to find truths, or even answers, one of them, the narrator of the title story, attempts to shake off her passivity and does so in acts of unspeakable cruelty. Yet aside from the observer-as-witness theme, Ogawa makes tremendous use of one unifying factor, the all pervasive influence of the European fairy tale.

This is where these bizarre, beautiful and sinister stories belong. They are modern fairy tales with all the mystery, bewilderment, muted horror and concentration on food and eating. It is as if her narrators exist within dark traps, the respective prisons of their minds. These women peer at the world and for all the confusion they see, they somehow observe with a clarity that is forensic, even sickening. In the title story, the narrator who lives with her parents in the Light House, the orphanage they run, is secretly, obsessively in love with one of the boys, Jun, whom she has known since childhood and who practices at the diving pool each day.

"My mother was the heartiest, most cheerful person at the Light House" recalls the narrator, "Particularly talkative during dinner, she was not one to cast about for topics that would include everyone, preferring to talk about herself and her interests from the moment we sat down until the meal was over. As she would grow increasingly excited and out of breath, I often wondered whether she in fact hated herself for talking so much."

The narrator watches her mother, noting "Her lips were like two maggots that never stopped wriggling, and I found myself wanting to squash them between my fingers."

Yet she is capable of tenderness when her thoughts turn to her beloved "Jun's hair was dry by then. His body seemed smaller and more vulnerable when it wasn't wet." Ogawa evokes atmospheres that are oppressively precise; her narrators are intense, slightly crazed, aware that they are caught not only by their respective circumstances, but by their minds. The girl watches her beloved and wonders at his kindness, his ability to absorb the close, oppressive world that has unsettled her: ". . . how he could be so kind while I felt nothing but the cruellest sort of disgust. He would come down from the diving board and return to the Light House . . . and then soak up all the things that set my nerves on edge. . ."

Having already inflicted a nasty experience on Rie, the youngest child in the home, the narrator then presents the same toddler with half of a stale cream puff. In true wicked witch fashion, she has already considered the cake: "I realized that the sweet sell of the eggs and sugar and milk had been replaced by an acrid smell, like that of an unripe grapefruit. As Rie's lips sank into the cream, the smell filled the room."

The facts are unsettling in themselves, but the true genius of Ogawa's surreal, unnervingly exact vision is the tidy, almost organised clarity with which she approaches the task of following the thoughts of her narrators - these are people who think deeply, too deeply and whose ability to feel, particularly in the case of the narrator of the outstanding concluding story, Dormitory, a David Lynch-like mystery, approaches a physical act.

In Pregnancy Diary, the narrator looks on as her sister begins an experience of extraordinary melodrama; the sister is not prepared for any of the various stages of pregnancy and wants everyone to suffer with her. Ogawa for all her cool exactness is also very funny and the laconic voice of the narrator extracts the maximum humour from the pregnant sister's trials.

Both the narrator and the pregnant woman's husband, the three share a house, eventually realise that their mere habit of eating becomes a source of much grief for the mother-to-be. The comedy lies in Ogawa's brilliant understatement, at times it is reminiscent of Lorrie Moore at her least self indulgent. It becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to eat in the house as the pregnant woman objects to even the smell of cooking. Her husband is sympathetic.

BUT THE NARRATOR, WHO takes to eating in the garden, is not impressed: "My brother-in-law seems particularly pitiful to me, since he has no reason to feel sick, and I found myself getting angry over his little sighs and whimpers." Meanwhile, the characterisation of the pregnant woman is gathering momentum, her peevishness is vividly conveyed yet she never becomes a caricature as Ogawa ensures she remains a convincing study of a woman resenting every minute of her discomfort. When her appetite returns, she becomes bigger and bigger.

The final story opens with the narrator attempting to help her young cousin find college accommodation. His request brings her back to her old dormitory building which is run by a man with no arms and only one leg. Admittedly her cousin's arrival has come at what seems a good time for the narrator as her husband has gone to Sweden for work and she is waiting to join him. "My life, too, seemed to be drifting in circles, as if caught in the listless season."

The manager offers to make tea for the narrator and her cousin. As he has only one leg and no arms, it would seem an impossible project, but the tea making becomes a beautiful ballet and the narrator's appreciation of this beauty not only establishes her sympathy but confers a touching vulnerability on a singular story which Ogawa succeeds in keeping pitched between the humane and the horrific.

Here is a restrained, wily surrealist who beguiles and terrifies in equal measure.

• Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of the Irish Times