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What Members Thought
The Makioka Sisters is essentially 500 pages of an increasingly desparate attempt to find someone to marry the third sister of a family in financial decline, while trying to stop the fourth sister going off the rails and ruining her chances.
It is memorable for its excruciating dinner parties, obsession with minor ailments and vitamin B injections and possibly the most bizarre ending sentence I have ever come across. I was expecting something a lot more heavy-going and was pleasantly suprised by ...more
It is memorable for its excruciating dinner parties, obsession with minor ailments and vitamin B injections and possibly the most bizarre ending sentence I have ever come across. I was expecting something a lot more heavy-going and was pleasantly suprised by ...more
May 24, 2020
Pamela
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
tonkin-best-100-translation,
japan
This majestic novel is set in 1930s Japan, and tells the story of a traditional Japanese family. The two elder Makioka sisters are married, the elder living in the 'main house' in Tokyo and the second in Osaka. Much of the novel centres on the quest to find the third sister, Yukiko, a husband - to do this the family must take part in complicated formal negotiations, which so far have ended in failure. Meanwhile the capricious fourth sister, Taeko, struggles with the constraints of her life, and
...more
This is the first Japanese novel I’ve read and I enjoyed the introduction to an unfamiliar culture. The plot relies heavily on marriage negotiations and my interest began to lag as the novel progressed. However, it was very interesting to get a glimpse of the clash between traditional and modern elements in a Japanese family in the turbulent years of the 1930s and early 40s.
A melancholic take on the novel of manners, told through a distinctly Asian sensitivity. It speaks of the end of an era in a way that reads very ambivalent to the European reader. Everything is fleeting, transient, and decaying, and this is portrayed as a reason for sadness, but also not necessarily as a bad thing. It makes me wonder how many of the hidden, layered nuances I did miss as a Western reader, and not even because of the translation. But I was attuned enough that I did wonder, and rea
...more
Sep 24, 2014
Christopher
marked it as to-read
Feb 12, 2015
Larry
marked it as to-read
Jun 20, 2017
Heather(Gibby)
marked it as maybe
Dec 31, 2019
Nidhi Kumari
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2020
Janice (JG)
marked it as to-read
Jul 08, 2020
Henk
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
owned,
japanese-literature
Jun 06, 2021
Susan
marked it as to-read
