2006 Reading List - Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh
Book Eighteen
Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh[1]: Boogiepop and Others by Kadono Kouhei, translated by Andrew Cunningham
The main reason I read this book is because my co-worker translated it. And, in its way, that makes me slightly sad.
He reads Japanese books exclusively now, and has returned to the US to take up translating full time. For a while now, I've been hearing about all these books he's been going through, and they all sound really weird and really cool. Mystical battles for the fate of reality, clumsy vampire girls who get thundering nosebleeds, motorcycling pre-teens with guns, visiting little isolated countries.... They're all really interesting-sounding, and I can't read any of them. Admittedly, I haven't put nearly as much effort into learning to read Japanese that he has, so I have only myself to blame. Still....
Boogiepop is one of those weirdly brilliant ideas that take a little while to wrap your head around. At Shinyo Academy, a second-rate high school somewhere in Japan, girls are disappearing. The teachers and police figure they're runaways - after all, these aren't the prize students, the cream of the crop. They're pretty well ordinary, and if a few girls run off every now and then, well, these things happen.
But the girls at Shinyo Academy have a legend. A rumor. The boys don't know about it, but I daresay they'll find out. The secret is Boogiepop.
Boogiepop is.... Well, I don't think even he knows what he is. Is he an alien intelligence possessing the body of young Miyashita Touka? Is he simply a repressed expression of her personality? Is he a shinigami, a death-spirit who takes girls while they're still pretty?
Maybe.
Whatever Boogiepop is, he's the only thing that is standing between the Manticore - the man-eater - and the end of the world. The Manticore has insinuated itself into the school and seduced - or been seduced by - one of the boys. It has terrible plans, and Boogiepop might thwart them. If he feels like it.
It's a weird book. You get a crash course in Japanese high school life, albeit even the author admits that the school in his book is a lot more strict than most high schools are these days. Forbidding dating, having teachers patrol the neighborhood on off hours to make sure the kids aren't frittering away their youth by having fun.... The relationships between the characters are complex, affected by gender, age and position much more than those of us from an American high school might be used to. But the narrative is oddly compelling and complex.
Oh, and the author doesn't deal with such childish fripperies as "linear storytelling." The various sections of the story are told from the points of view of various people, from various points in time. There are flashbacks and flash-forwards, and from time to time we see the same event from the perspective of two or even three different people (although from what I've proofread in my free lessons, the next book has one event viewed from no less than four different points of view). It takes a little bit of getting used to, but he does warn you, right in the beginning....
For those of you who are into Young Adult fiction (and you know who you are), definitely check it out. The translation is very readable and natural (and I'm not just saying that because I helped to proofread it), and it's a fun and complicated story. Plus, there's a nice preview of volume two, where you get to meet the cram school guidance counselor who can tell a person's personality by the image of plants that he sees in their chest. Like I said, weird. But good.
[1] The Japanese is Boogiepop wa wararanai, which can be translated either as "Boogiepop Doesn't Smile" or "Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh." The former being the more interesting (and thematically accurate) translation, the publishing company naturally chose the latter. The translator is still pissed about it.
Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh[1]: Boogiepop and Others by Kadono Kouhei, translated by Andrew Cunningham
The main reason I read this book is because my co-worker translated it. And, in its way, that makes me slightly sad.
He reads Japanese books exclusively now, and has returned to the US to take up translating full time. For a while now, I've been hearing about all these books he's been going through, and they all sound really weird and really cool. Mystical battles for the fate of reality, clumsy vampire girls who get thundering nosebleeds, motorcycling pre-teens with guns, visiting little isolated countries.... They're all really interesting-sounding, and I can't read any of them. Admittedly, I haven't put nearly as much effort into learning to read Japanese that he has, so I have only myself to blame. Still....
Boogiepop is one of those weirdly brilliant ideas that take a little while to wrap your head around. At Shinyo Academy, a second-rate high school somewhere in Japan, girls are disappearing. The teachers and police figure they're runaways - after all, these aren't the prize students, the cream of the crop. They're pretty well ordinary, and if a few girls run off every now and then, well, these things happen.
But the girls at Shinyo Academy have a legend. A rumor. The boys don't know about it, but I daresay they'll find out. The secret is Boogiepop.
Boogiepop is.... Well, I don't think even he knows what he is. Is he an alien intelligence possessing the body of young Miyashita Touka? Is he simply a repressed expression of her personality? Is he a shinigami, a death-spirit who takes girls while they're still pretty?
Maybe.
Whatever Boogiepop is, he's the only thing that is standing between the Manticore - the man-eater - and the end of the world. The Manticore has insinuated itself into the school and seduced - or been seduced by - one of the boys. It has terrible plans, and Boogiepop might thwart them. If he feels like it.
It's a weird book. You get a crash course in Japanese high school life, albeit even the author admits that the school in his book is a lot more strict than most high schools are these days. Forbidding dating, having teachers patrol the neighborhood on off hours to make sure the kids aren't frittering away their youth by having fun.... The relationships between the characters are complex, affected by gender, age and position much more than those of us from an American high school might be used to. But the narrative is oddly compelling and complex.
Oh, and the author doesn't deal with such childish fripperies as "linear storytelling." The various sections of the story are told from the points of view of various people, from various points in time. There are flashbacks and flash-forwards, and from time to time we see the same event from the perspective of two or even three different people (although from what I've proofread in my free lessons, the next book has one event viewed from no less than four different points of view). It takes a little bit of getting used to, but he does warn you, right in the beginning....
For those of you who are into Young Adult fiction (and you know who you are), definitely check it out. The translation is very readable and natural (and I'm not just saying that because I helped to proofread it), and it's a fun and complicated story. Plus, there's a nice preview of volume two, where you get to meet the cram school guidance counselor who can tell a person's personality by the image of plants that he sees in their chest. Like I said, weird. But good.
[1] The Japanese is Boogiepop wa wararanai, which can be translated either as "Boogiepop Doesn't Smile" or "Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh." The former being the more interesting (and thematically accurate) translation, the publishing company naturally chose the latter. The translator is still pissed about it.