J,” “The Little Dustman,” “Lab Coats,” “Sewing for the Heart,” “Welcome to the Museum of Torture,” “The Man Who Sold Braces,” “The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger,” “Tomatoes and the Full Moon,” and “Poison Plants.” In case anyone is looking for Revenge’s story list, here it is in order: “Afternoon at the Bakery,” “Fruit Juice,” “Old Mrs. The incident speaks more of a strong short story collection than a superlative memory, sadly. Surprisingly though, after some reminiscing, I remember the full list along with the general plot of each story. I’m separated from my copy of Revenge as I write this review and I couldn’t find the full story list online, even Revenge’s Wikipedia page only noted eight stories. Misery loves company and if you can’t be a little less miserable, why not drag others into a state of misery? This is a short story collection about being lonely and adrift – and the horrifying things people do to feel a little less lonely and adrift. Revenge plays into my favorite horror thematic: that the scariest actions aren’t caused by supernatural beings, but by the awful side of human nature. But always there is an underlying sense of the uncanny. The heart condition can be waved off as a health anomaly, the weird carrots can be attributed to the seeds or the soil. Yet you can read all the stories as part of the realism genre. In “Sewing for the Heart,” a nightclub singer’s heart is attached to her outer chest. J,” a murdered husband is buried in a garden patch, resulting in carrots shaped like human hands. How to describe the stories in unison? Sometimes it feels as though they had a touch of magical realism.

And I do think Ogawa’s almost-surgical prose lends an iciness that adds to the creepy atmosphere of Revenge. Revenge is more eerie than scream-inducing, its horror lies in atmosphere rather than bombast. But if you wanted serial killers and vampires, Revenge isn’t for you. I was left feeling a bit grim post-reading. The collection is subtitled “Eleven Dark Tales” and it’s no joke. I loved Ogawa’s writing style enough to try again though, so here we are with a review of her short story collection Revenge.įolks, I love Revenge. But the story leaves something to be desired – its ending was rushed, abrupt, and anticlimactic.

On the one hand, I loved the prose: pure, pristine, and clear. I read Hotel Iris, my first Yoko Ogawa, last year (full-length review here) and had mixed feelings about it.

Revenge ogawa yoko