The Hole

So short (less than 100 pages), so weird, and so great. Asa has a temp position in a city in Japan. Her husband gets a transfer with more money, so they move to podunk countryside Japan to live in a house owned by his parents, right next door to his parents. Asa and her husband go from communicating and eating together to something else: She, no longer employed, is going slightly stir crazy because she's alone with nothing to do and no way really to get around; he, with the only car, is at work until all hours, or else he's on his phone, completely checking out of their life together.

And then she's walking to the store one day and sees a strange animal. With no clue what it is, she decides to follow it–and falls down a hole.

Thus begins her strange Louis Carroll-y almost non-adventure, in which she meets strange neighbors and, apparently, her secret brother-in-law. She sees dozens of children playing at the river. She notices strange things about her husband's grandfather and meets the strange neighbor who always wears the same clothes. And nothing seems quite right anymore.

Are the isolation and loneliness getting to her? Or is something weirder going on?

My wife read this first and wanted to discuss it, so I read it. It takes no time at all and is a bit WTF, but it was also weird and wonderful. It sparked a great discussion of what was actually happening with the weirdness and all those old people and children other people maybe don't see. And interactions Asa has just add to the weird. The atmosphere is great. In just a short book, Oyamada-sensei has created a very confusing, lonely world for our heroine. Is it real, or is she losing it? Is something mysterious going on, or is being a woman following a man with nothing upon which to fall back a potentially bad idea?