A young husband sits on a commuter train, transmogrified by alcohol; a young doctor finds in an eccentric acupuncturist both a mirror of his own childhood and an inexplicable peace; a young woman marries her married lover, only to find her life swamped by guilt over the breakdown of his first marriage; the development of the self, and its subsequent compromise in the course of relationships, is the theme of the six elegant stories in this collection. Banana Yoshimoto's is a strong, yet beguiling voice - "the voice," as one reviewer put it, "of young Japan" - and her stories are both strongly coloured and strangely gentle. In her afterword the writer explains how she borrowed one title from a rock song; another story first appeared as a serial on posters in Tokyo commuter trains; as portraits of heart stopping moments in the lives of their characters, these slight pieces have great substance.
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