Before I started this blog- before I even thought about having one, my friend said to me one evening that I should start a blog and review books, since I like reading so much. Well, I don’t think I am qualified to be a critic- I don’t know literature but I know what I like!) and I’m relatively shy as an author (something I am attempting to work my way past with this very blog) but I just finished an excellent book, and I want to share. So here we go- Ananth, this one’s for you.
At Katsucon I bought a book from a vendor. It was what she called a yard sale transaction. One five dollar bill, no tax, no receipt, just that simple exchange, and I had a new book by an author I’d never heard of. Boy am I glad I did. The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson is really powerful book.
Don’t you hate that? “a powerful book.” What the hell does that mean, anyway? In this case it means that I finished the book and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. Every time I put the book down, for whatever reason (I was too sleepy to continue reading, lunch was over and I had to go back to pretending to work, I had to eat breakfast…) I had a hard time shaking off the world created in the book. Almost like I was haunted by it.
It’s set in ninth century Japan, mostly on the rural estate of Kaya No Yoshifuji. It seems to be basically a retelling of a fairy tale. Divided into five sections- one for each season and an epilogue of New Year- he story of a fox who falls in love with Kaya no Yoshifuji, and with the help of her grandfather and magic, becomes a human woman and steals him away from his wife. There is a great deal written about love and poetry and the meaning of life, all told as if we were reading these three character’s diaries instead of a novel.
If you prefer action to character development and a really detailed world, then you probably won’t like this book. I have to admit that even I thought it was slow until mid-autumn, and I’m usually compulsive about characters. Still, I enjoyed it, and I recommend it to others. I think I’m going to go look for more of this author’s work. I wonder, is ‘Kij’ a male name or a female name?