This is my first of Ogawa's books, but exceeded expectations. In these novellas, people disappear and die; cruelty abounds, muddled with eroticism. Ogawa's peculiar power, in these stories, is that of unveiling. She gives us a real world, inhabitable, and perhaps already inhabited by the readers. Yet, if the world is so recognizable, how can it be so strange and unfamiliar? Each story features a narrator who refuses aspects of themselves, chases desires that are formless or unattainable.

It's my favorite read of the year so far, and I'm so excited to read more of Ogawa's works.