The Book Depository The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
236 ratings
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Price: £10.83
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: The Factory : Paperback : New Directions Publishing Corporation : 9780811228855 : 0811228851 : 12 Nov 2019 : The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada-one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan. The Book Depository The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780811228855
MPN: 0811228851
GTIN: 9780811228855
Author: apple pie 16
Rating: 5
Review: Honestly I'm not sure what to make of this yet. There's obviously the direct read - about the rise of contract labor in Japan and how it perpetuates meaningless-feeling lives. But the setting of the book, the factory- feels nonphysical, so everything is potentially a symbol, adding up to, I think - an understanding of how this author felt as she drifted through various part time jobs. You can continue to flow on, repeating labor day after day, being paid well - and end up like the old man on the bus: ignored by kids (who don't know that maybe the same fate awaits then). The way this book portrays work makes it feel inescapable, almost in a "you're fated to live and die like this", but at the same time the characters have serious communication issues and lack of imagination and engagement with the world outside of work. Maybe the sister in this book realizes that, becoming a "bird" and flying away, days after eating with the character who spent 15 years doing nothing but aimlessly studying moss.
Author: Gerald O'Malley
Rating: 1
Review: Insomnia? Have I got the book for you. Really, really difficult to slog your way through this mess - it's only 116 pages long but it took me a week to get through it because I kept falling asleep. I'm glad I read Oyamada's other English language book (THE HOLE) first because as bad as that one was, at least is had some narrative flow to it. If I had read THE FACTORY first, I never would've picked up THE HOLE. Having read both books and given Oyamada a fair chance, I've come to the conclusion that she is a hopelessly overrated writer. I wish there was a way to give this book zero stars as a rating. This book is such a pretentious, boring, stupid dumpster fire that I have no idea how anyone who reads it can answer otherwise with a straight face. Essentially, three characters all begin work at "The Factory," a massive, mysterious place where everything seems great at first, but quickly, all sorts of weird, unexplainable things begin to happen and the jobs, which never had any purpose, begin to consume the characters, destroying their creativity and individuality. Oh wait! That's what supposedly happens to actual people in their real-world jobs! I get it now! This book is actually a brilliant expose of modern life and the soul-crushing monotony and conformity of the industrial-economic complex! Please - spare me. Oyamada is no Kafka and this book is a complete waste of time. I will not be reading any more Oyamada.
