Calling You, by Otsu-Ichi

[rachelmanija]

Three fantasy novellettes, plus illustrations by Miyako Hasami. (Prose novellettes, not manga.)

Click here to get it from Amazon: Calling You (Novel)

The first, "Calling You," was my favorite. A lonely girl who doesn't have a cell phone because no one would ever call her imagines herself one... and one day, it rings. The working out of this conceit is clever and, despite what I at first saw as an overly melodramatic twist, quite moving.

"Kiz/Kids," about two lonely kids in a special ed class, didn't grab me as much as the other two despite featuring one of my favorite tropes, psychic powers. I did enjoy the gruesomely logical approach the kids take toward exploring the limits of the power, which is to move injuries from another person onto the psychic kid's body.

In "Flower Song," the narrator recovers in a hospital from a tragic train crash, and there discovers a flower with a woman's face. I liked the slow movement from numbed stasis to connection and healing, and how the flower isn't quite what it first seems to be. I'm not sure if the very ending was supposed to be as surprising as I found it...

ETA: If you speak Japanese and don't mind being spoiled, please read the comments and help us out!



I assumed the narrator was male because it never occurred to me that shared hospital rooms could be co-ed, and the roommates are male. Am I crazy? Are co-ed hospital rooms common in Japan or even in the US, and I just didn't know? Or was that a completely unlikely circumstance intended to create a surprise gender twist at the end?

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

It's definitely possible to write a story in first person that is entirely ambiguous. Pronouns give some hint, but can be ambiguous since there are many, many pronouns and only some of them are specifically gendered and even those are sometimes used by the opposite sex (and watashi is not female; it's neutral in polite speech, just women tend to use it (or more often atashi) even in more casual speech), plus pronouns are just really rarely used in Japanese, period. The subject is usually left off because it's implied.

Now I'm really curious as to what the original was like. I'm going to try and find the book in Japanese.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

I read it in Japanese--had a huge, flailing, OMG LOVE post about it when I discovered "Calling You", and recently read "Flower Song."

Every Otsu-ichi story I've read so far has been written in first person, and I boggled at Flower Song, because it was a massive plot-twist; there was no indication that the narrator wasn't male...or indication that anyone in that hospital room wasn't, because no pronouns were used for them and everyone was [family name]-san. The narrator used "watashi," but that didn't strike me as particularly masculine or feminine--probably because of the illustrations, maybe, as well as lack of feminine (or masculine) endings in anyone's speech. I was gobsmacked when I hit the end and was like, "Wait, WHAT?!"

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! That's exactly what I wanted to know.

[octopedingenue]

I have to go find your OMG LOVE post now! I haven't read Calling You yet but I read Goth (book/manga) last October and it has EATEN MY BRAIN. Zoo is coming out in English from Haikasoru* later this year. I am excited!


*Haikasoru = High Castle, because Viz = DORKS

[homasse.livejournal.com]

It was a while back--at least a year and a half, maybe, since I was still in language school when I read it (I looked for it and couldn't find it). "Calling You" was the story that got me reading Otsu-ichi, and I have almost all of his books now and have read three or four. Definitely read "Calling You"--I loved it so, so much and started translating "Happiness is in the Shape of a Kitten" from the "Ushinawareru Monogatari" collection on my lj, but stopped due to lack of time.

"Zoo" is really, really good (I've read Zoo 1 and have just started Zoo 2), but OMFG DEPRESSING. The first two stories had me going D: the whole time, especially the first one (but then, I react badly to child abuse/child neglect stories).

Goth is next or second to next on my list of his stuff to read (the book ahead of it is a short collection of short stories, and I've already read half of them in other collections) after Zoo 2.