The book tackles a surprisingly amount of material in two short stories. The book is about love, loss, loneliness, resilience, tolerance, death, relationships, family and the will to go on. Best 150 pages I have read in a long time. The kitchen is my happy place, I draw the line at sleeping on the floor though. 'The place I like best in this world is the kitchen.' Best first line of a book for me. Life needs to go on for those who remain. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.' This quote ties in to the overall message of the book and how the living need to continue living their life, despite their grief. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”Īnother powerful quote is 'Everyone we love is dying. Again and again I will suffer again and again I will get back on my feet. “As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Six years later, I see how 303 other people have added this to their personal quotes. When I read the book the first time, I entered the quote into the GR quote database. I almost forgot that the book contains one of my favorite quotes. It also emphasized the importance of relationships and interdependence in helping one deal with grief. There was definitely a message that life goes on and that things will get better. It felt sad, but very hopeful, at the same time. It is one of the few examples of books that deal with death and dying that actually aren't hugely depressing. I enjoyed this book even more the second time around.

I liked the use of kitchen as a place to feel comfort and the preparation of food and sharing of food as giving meaning to life. “But if a person hasn’t ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life, never understanding what joy really is”. Quotes: “My family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by, but when it suddenly dawned on me that I was alone, everything before my eyes seemed to false.” “I just drifted, listless.” The author won the Nihon University Dept of Arts Prize in 1986 for Mood Shadow and Kaien magazine New Writer Prize in 1987 for Kitchen. I would think that the author had her own losses to be able to capture so accurately in so few pages that experience.

I like stories of grief and loss so of course this is another book that i like. This tale of grief, loss and being an adult orphan is rich with sparse detail. Two short stories by Japanese author, translated from the Japanese by Megan Backus.

Kitchen banana yoshimoto goodreads