Tor’s been consistently putting out some incredible novellas like JY Yang’s Tensorate series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot books, and Pushkin Press put out this lovely sextet of Japanese novellas. If there are more pages in the book because the publisher wanted to round the volume out with some short stories, it takes a bit away from both of those things.īut some publishers, mostly science fiction/fantasy and small presses, are taking up the novella as a work in and of itself again. You start it and you finish it in a couple hours, and end up feeling accomplished and refreshed. Plus a novella is the perfect length for whiling away an afternoon reading. They’re standalone works that deserve the pages and binding to sit and breathe alone, without being crowded by shorter pieces with a fundamentally different feel and structure. And while I’m not necessarily opposed to that approach-after all, it’s the publishing of the book that costs the most adding more pages is pretty cheap comparatively-novellas have never really sat too nicely in that setting for me. Too long to be a short story, too short to stand alone as a novel, these tales have so often been relegated to short story collections, that big-ass story that rounds out the collection, the meal after several tiny appetizers. I feel like novellas are enjoying a resurgence of sorts in the last few years. Louise Heal Kawai) Spring Garden: Tomoka Shibasaki (trans. Lucy North) Ms Ice Sandwich: Meiko Kawakami (trans. From warm sake to chilled beer, from the buds on the trees to the blooming of the cherry blossoms, the reader is enveloped by a keen sense of pathos and both characters' keen loneliness.Record of a Night Too Brief: Hiromi Kawakami (trans. As Tsukiko and Sensei grow to know and love one another, time's passing comes across through the seasons and the food and beverages they consume together. lationship-traced by Kawakami's gentle hints at the changing seasons-develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to an enjoyable sense of companionship, and finally into a deeply sentimental love affair. He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Tsukiko had only ever called him Sensei ( Teacher ). One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, Sensei in a local bar. Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. Translated by Powell, Allison Markin By Kawakami, Hiromi The Briefcase (Trade Paperback / Paperback)
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