Phil W. Bayles

(The Japanese Novel, Not The Dairy Product.)

I’ve been reading it on and off — though mostly off — for about three months now, and I’m about ready to throw in the towel.

There’s a lot of interesting things to chew on (please forgive the food metaphor, but with a book named Butter it’s hard to resist). It has a lot to say about the subtle evil in the way we put a moral judgement on thinness and beauty; the particular flavour of misogyny that runs through contemporary Japan; some truly mouthwatering descriptions of food and sensual, almost erotic, scenes about the act of consuming it.

But there’s also something very sluggish about the prose; reading it always made me feel like I’d just eaten a heavy meal. Whether that’s the original text or a side effect of translation, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I need to put it aside and read something else, before I lose the joy of reading entirely. Maybe I’ll revisit it in the future, when I’ve worked up an appetite.

For now, I’m going to read a sci-fi novel about the Moon inexplicably turning into cheese.

(When I told my wife about this, she made a joke that my reading was maturing. I think it might actually be curdling.)