Reviews for The Crazy iris and other stories of the atomic aftermath

The average rating for The Crazy iris and other stories of the atomic aftermath based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-12 00:00:00 Robert Lambert While reading the Introduction by Kenzaburo Oe, an idea popping up in my mind urged me to try reading the nine stories based on a new order, that is, according to the titles as introduced respectively. So my reading sequence started with 1) Summer Flower, followed by 2) The Land of Heart's Desire, 3) Fireflies, 4) The Crazy Iris, 5) The Colorless Paintings, 6) The Rite, 7) The Empty Can, 8) The House of Hands, and 9) Human Ashes. Doing something to lessen boredom if I kept reading the stories from its traditional order in the Contents page as denoted by the title numbers above: 4, 1, 2, 9, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 6, I thought this reading design should be more interesting and it satisfactorily worked. I also tried not to read the whole introduction (pp. 9-35), rather I read each paragraph about each writer, turned to read his/her story till the end, then I would return to the introduction and resume reading the following paragraph on the second writer, then read his/her story. For instance, I read the introduction on Tamiki Hara (pp. 10-11) then read his "Summer Flower" (pp. 37-54) and "The Land Of Heart's Desire" (pp. 55-62). Next, in the introduction on Yoko Ota (p. 11) then read her "Fireflies" (pp. 85-111). Next, in the introduction on Masuji Ibuse (pp. 11-12) then read his "The Crazy Iris", etc. Consequently, I found reading most of these readable, grieving and frank stories less boring and, out of the blue, I guessed some of the foreign or Japanese translators might have wept bitterly while translating some particular lines/paragraphs due to the narrative/dialog impact penned by those Japanese writers having/not having direct experience regarding the Hiroshima bombing. Moreover, this sentence stunned me as if the writer himself had known my thought 68 years later: "Yet more important than any meaning was the wave of emotion that brought hot tears to my eyes." (p. 56) Nearly equally readable, these stories are of various lengths and of course different literary impact; therefore, I would write my review and comment focusing on one or two stories I preferred. One of the reasons is that I don't want to do it all, this arena should be open to all of my Goodreads friends who, I hope, would decide to follow suit. I mean they find a copy to read as they like, write their reviews from their ideas/creation, or write the reviews covering the nine stories and I would look forward to reading them soon.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-05-01 00:00:00 Daniel Garza (3.5 ⭐) I really appreciate that this collection isn't all the moment of the atomic bombs but stories of afterwards and where atomic aftermath would be a subtle. I flowed with some better than others. I didn't feel like I managed to access the final story (The Rite) at all and the feeling of what I was reading went over my head. But overall a good collection.