Dead-End Memories

Strange, melancholy and beautiful. At the centre of each story is a woman negotiating the quiet fallout of personal history. . . each one feels distinct, rich in its own particular way. . . These stories made me believe again that it was possible to write honestly, rigorously, morally, about the material reality of characters; to write toward human warmth as a reaffirmation of the bonds that tie us together. This is a supremely hopeful book, one that feels important because it shows that happiness, while not always easy, is still a subject worthy of art.

Dead-End Memories is a collection of stories, each of which, while specific and distinct, has at its centre a woman both losing and finding something of herself. In Asa Yoneda’s elegant translation of this collection—whose title story Yoshimoto herself considers her best—the soothing rhythm of the everyday and the mundane is broken by equally quiet moments of profundity.

Reading Banana Yoshimoto is like taking a bracing, cleansing bath. These gentle yet formidable stories in Dead-End Memories rinse away the unimportant minutiae of life, leaving behind only the essential.

Yoshimoto has an effortless ability to penetrate her characters’ hearts.

[Yoshimoto's] ability to make everyday events seem romantic is a rare gift.

A sure and lyrical writer . . . Yoshimoto transforms the trite into the essential.