Toddler Hunting: And Other Stories [Paperback]

Konos intimatedescriptions of unhappy relationships are not only unexpectedly frank, butoften genuinely shocking.Japanese master of the unsettling: Kono should be an electrifying discovery for English-speaking lovers of short fiction. Each story unburies something that feels both thrillingly specific and surprisingly contemporary.Provocative and eerily moving in their confrontation of the terrifying and the taboo. Each of Konos stories features characters confronting new ways to live with their own secret selves: a strikingly original and surprising collection.Both the sadism and masochism here is very rawbut pain and pleasure mingle in ways that never cease to be surprising or poetic.The fiery, beguiling stories inTwo currents are constantly crossing in the stories, the first depicting the polite forms of public interactions and the second pulsing with taboo fantasies and hallucinations. There are resonances here with Tanizaki, but Konos subversions feel somehow scarier, in part because of her deadpan prose and in part because she strikes at sacred paradigms of motherhood and femininity.Reminiscent of Flannery OConnors works, Konos stories explore the dark, terrifying side of human nature that manifests itself in antisocial behavior.I was not prepared for this unsettling and unforgettable collection. These stories left me shaken and in awe; they are incendiary, beautiful, and frightening confrontations of the lives we keep hidden from others. Taeko Kono fearlessly writes into the abyss, and there is no one like her.Konos unsparing gazepenetrates the depths of human nature, and she sets forth what she finds therewith absolute precision.