The original Japanese title translates along the lines of “Silent Corpse, Improper Funeral” and it is ever more evocative than base ‘Revenge’. And so to are these stories. Swift and decisive anger, as suggested by the misleading title and cover art, replaced with the slow, weighted emotions of sorrow, obsession, depression, tragedy, loss, displacement, betrayal and isolation. Ogawa’s blood is the blood collected in dark crimson pools and the black soakings uncovered days after the fact, not the blood of swift, grisly screams. Horrific melancholia closer to the pervading tone. But then there is also a simultaneous working of cool-headed craft at play within the construction of  her macabre assemblage. From Three Percent:

Ogawa’s greatest achievement in Revenge is the strange ways her stories turn, defying expectation and at the same time making each story fit perfectly in the entirety of the work. She never has to resort to a cheap trick to shock the reader; instead she revels in her slow, methodical reveals, masterfully building tension and absorbing the reader into her surreal, twisted world. In one of the highlights of the book, “Sewing for the Heart,” an expert bag maker is tasked with his most difficult challenge yet: creating a bag designed to protect a human heart precariously attached to the outside of a beautiful woman’s body. But other stories work equally well, without the threat of violence, and the darkness that pervades the atmosphere is that of melancholy instead. “The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger” follows a woman as she goes to confront her husband’s mistress, only to witness instead the final moments of a dying pet tiger. All of these stories connect in surprising ways. Incidental characters from one story become the stars of another; scenes and places from one story collide in the next; inanimate objects become important markers throughout the text. The effect is dizzying, awe-inspiring, electrifying. Revenge is a panorama of people, places, and things that come in and out of focus, tying the work together in unbelievable ways. The stories themselves are short, almost ethereal, and loose in detail, yet they come together into something much more than just the sum of its parts.

And the internet blog, biblioklept, interestingly points out how select phrases from the writing become perfect descriptions for Ogawa’s prose: “there was an icy current running under her words, and I found myself wanting to plunge into it again and again”, “She had explained that she was born with her heart outside of her chest”, “it was all so painful and yet so utterly beautiful to imagine”. And in further praise:

There’s no postmodern gimmickry on display here though. Ogawa weaves her tales together with organic ease, her control both powerful and graceful. Her narrators contradict each other; we’re offered perspectives, glimpses, shades and slivers of meaning. A version of events recounted differently several stories later seems no more true than an earlier version, but each new detail adds to the elegant tangle. Like David Lynch and Roberto Bolaño, Ogawa traffics in beautiful, venomous, bizarre dread. Like those artists, she offers a discrete world we sense is complete and unified, even as our access to it is broken and discontinuous. And like Angela Carter, Ogawa channels the icy current seething below the surface of our darkest fairy tales, those stories that, with their sundry murders and crimes, haunt readers decades after first readings.