Snakes and Earrings.SNAKES AND EARRINGS Snakes and Earrings (2003) is the English language translation of Hebi ni Piasu (蛇にピアス, "Snakes and piercings") (ISBN 0-525-94889-9), a novel by Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara, which won the 2003 Akutagawa Prize for literature. BY HITOMI KANEHARA Hitomi Kanehara (金原 ひとみ Kanehara Hitomi , TRANSLATED BY DAVID David, in the Bible David, d. c.970 B.C., king of ancient Israel (c.1010–970 B.C.), successor of Saul. The Book of First Samuel introduces him as the youngest of eight sons who is anointed king by Samuel to replace Saul, who had been deemed a failure. KARASHIMA NEW YORK New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : DUTTON. 120 PAGES. $18. Sometimes it isn't the obscure or unusual that most seizes our attention, but the keen observation of everyday reality. In her debut novel, Snakes and Earrings, Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara ingenuously in·gen·u·ous adj. 1. Lacking in cunning, guile, or worldliness; artless. 2. Openly straightforward or frank; candid. See Synonyms at naive. 3. Obsolete Ingenious. limns the surreal brutality of her country's contemporary youth culture, just as Zadie Smith captured the landscape of "London now" in her first novel, White Teeth. Kanchara's female narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. Lui (short for "Louis Vuitton") stands poised as the voice of Japan's postbubble "lost generation," and her candid portrait caused a sensation on the book's Japanese publication in 2003. Snakes and Earrings became a best seller and earned the then twenty-year-old Kanehara the distinction of being one of the youngest authors to win the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's premier award for new writers. When the novel opens, Lui has met the piercing- and tattoo-adorned Ama (short for "Amadeus," he tells her) at a nightclub and becomes entranced by his forked tongue. They have sex that night and from then on are inseparable. Both of them children of consumerism, longing for substance and meaning, embodying the alienation of those who defy Japan's old mores, Ama and Lui begin to create their own separate reality. "All I wanted was to be part of an underground world," Lui admits, and their relationship is just that, buoyed by detached sex play, violence, and self-mutilation, and devoid of any genuine feeling. Lui's only commitments are to alcohol, sex, and stretching the hole in her pierced tongue until she can split it, as Ama did--a brutal accomplishment with only the illusion of significance. "I was addicted to stretching," Lui explains, and body modification, the "acute pain" it brings, is "the only feeling with the power to kick me back to life." Long immersed in this subculture, Ama holds tight to Lui, finding a purpose in caring for her--only Lui remains incapable of giving herself in return. Side by side, the two wayward teens can't help but mirror the yearning and dislocation of a nation struggling to find its place in the midst Adv. 1. in the midst - the middle or central part or point; "in the midst of the forest"; "could he walk out in the midst of his piece?" midmost of continued economic and social upheaval. To an outsider, Kanehara's description of their harrowing existence is striking for its seeming nonchalance. Straightforward and unapologetic, she never shies shies 1 v. Third person singular present tense of shy1. n. Plural of shy1. away from "dirty" realities, even including repeated references to Lui wiping semen from her body after sex. Though the novel works too hard at its ending, forcing Lui's redemption and realization, Snakes and Earrings remains elegantly raw and remarkable in its potent simplicity. |
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