A Quiet Life: A Novel

Kenzaburo Oe is easily one of my favorite writers. This book is probably the most sentimental and tender that I've read by him. For something brutal read, "The Silent Cry."I thought the amazon editorial review summed up the book well enough without spoiling anything. It's kind of shocking how well Oe pulls off the narrative voice for, "Machan." As a fan of Oe's work I wanted to say that out of the several books I've read by him this is easily one of his best. I think it's his most accessible too so this would be great for both fans and newcomers alike. Although this book gives a lot of attention to the "handicapped son" as with quite a few of his novels, Machan is certainly the main character. Their relationship in this book is touching and inspirational. Highly recommended.

I am not one to write reviews. Normally I leave this to other readers and tend to just enjoy the book without spoiling it in any way for other readers. Books should be your own discovery.'A Quiet LIfe' is a good book by Kenzaburo Oe and quite in line with the others he was written about his idiot, but (musically) capable, son. Like another reviewer here I had some problems with truly believing it was voiced by Ma-chan, Oe's daughter, because it's still clearly Oe doing the talking. Even when talking about himself. But all in all it's a very good Oe book, if not the best starting point.However, beware of buying the kindle edition. Besides randomly inserted points within sentences, words are often misspelled. In more than one instance there's the word 'me' instead of 'he' and the other way around as well. Sometimes it says 'me' instead of 'I'. At one point Christmas is spelled as Christinas. And the list goes on and on.So in a nutshell: good book, but a disturbingly faulty and unedited translation/kindle edition.

Found this book confusing.

Simply put, to open this novel is to enter a world of doubt and self doubt where singularity and mundanity co-exist easily.Ma-Chan a young woman of 20 is our narrator in this slim novel. While Ma-Chan's older brother has a handicap, he has a recognised gift for musical composition. Ma-Chan's younger brother is cramming for his examinations. Ma-Chan's mother's life revolves around caring for her oldest son and supporting her husband who is a famous novelist. Ma-Chan's father accepts a visiting professorship in America and his wife accompanies him. This sudden change to the dynamics of the family finds Ma-Chan accepting new responsibility and each one of the siblings finding different dimensions to their lives. The narration covers a period of 6 or 7 months. Sparse, well chosen prose brings this novel to life.This is a novel which invites the reader to think: to look beyond the obvious and to accept that perspectives are relative. To do all of this so beautifully within 240 pages is a precious gift indeed.I have not previously read any work by Kenzaburo Oe: a situation I will now address thanks to the recommendations of an Amazon friend. I understand that there are echoes of Kenzaburo's own life in this novel and I hope that the thread of hope and the blossoming of these characters is a reflection of that.Jennifer Cameron-Smith

"A Quiet Life" is the first person narrative of Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old university student and the daughter of a famous Japanese author. When her father accepts a visiting professorship at the University of California, and her mother decides to accompany him abroad, Ma-chan is left at home in Japan to care for her older, brain-damaged brother Eeyore (like the character in "Winnie-the-Pooh") and her younger brother, Oh-chan, who is studying for his university entrance exams."A Quiet Life" is a slow-moving story with little action and a deeply realistic, human touch. Like much of Oe's writing, "A Quiet Life" is a fictional work that is powerfully marked by a real-life event--the birth of Oe's brain-damaged son in the mid-1960s. Thus, Ma-chan, the narrator, grapples throughout the narrative with her feelings about Eeyore, as well as her feelings about her intellectual and emotionally distant father.Much of the novel is devoted to exploring Ma-chan's thoughts and feelings as she follows a mundane, day-to-day existence shepherding Eeyore to music lessons with Mr. Shegito, a professor and friend of her father, and to swimming lessons with Mr. Akai, a somewhat cold and sinister character of questionable motives. Along the way, Ma-chan continually realizes that Eeyore is, in many ways, a remarkably sensitive and gifted human being, despite his disability.Oe's narrative is enigmatic and subtle in its suggestiveness. Oe, through the voice of his narrator, makes much of words that Ma-chan repeats in her narrative, words that are italicized in the text and linger in the reader's mind like ontological talismans. The text, too, reflects the intellectual groundings of Ma-chan's distant father-seemingly the author Oe himself-when it delves into extended discussions of Tarkovsky's film, "Stalker" (based on the classic, if somewhat obscure science fiction novel, "Roadside Picnic" written by the Strugatsky brothers), and the writings of Celine, notably "Rigadoon" (in a somewhat disturbingly sympathetic literary riff on a notorious, albeit fascinating, anti-semite).While I am familiar with Oe's biography, this is the first novel I have read by him. He is an interesting and intellectually impressive writer who perhaps deserved the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. I know I will read more of his work. However, as Ma-chan's mother comments when Ma-chan tells her of the title of the diary she has kept: "'Diary as Home' sounds bland and dull." She then elicits a different title from Eeyore, who suggests: "How about 'A Quiet Life'? That's what our life's all about." It is, indeed, the narrative of a quiet life, but Eeyore's title unfortunately does not save Oe's book from being bland and dull. While "A Quiet Life" is redeemed by the sensitivity, the enigmatic feeling and the profound intellect of its author, the story ultimately falters on a sometimes mind-numbing banality and what seems to be a stilted English translation. Thus, while I enjoyed reading "A Quite Life," I often had difficulty maintaining my interest in Oe's narrative.

el humanismo de oe derivado del nacimiento de su hijo discapacitado y su visita a hiroshima lo convierten en un escritor con un punto de vista especial.su juventud en la aldea de ose y el imaginario colectivo de la zona resulta interesante, además de su especial capacidad para reinterpretar el pensamiento de grandes autores como damte o blake?a quiet life en concreto se situa en el punto de vista de la hija de oe cuando debe cuidar de su hermano mayor

a really good read, no surprise, it being from Kenzaburo Oe - a book full of insights in the human psyche and the coping with life's sometimes strange demands - the Kindle-edition is a slap in the face of the reader and the author likewise, though. Full of bad translation, seemingly random set full-stops in the middle of sentences, faulty spellings (alter instead of after, me instead of he, Christianis instead of Christmas...) - as good as the story is, this lectorial oversights are annoying, to put it mildly, and hinder the reading flow tremendously... do not buy the Kindle-edition!