BOOKMONGER
Translated work
foresees current
concerns
We’ve all been living through
tough times. If you sometimes
feel like society is at the end of
its rope, take comfort in knowing
you’re not alone. Nonetheless,
it was disconcerting to pick up a
copy of a newly translated work
by Masatsugu Ono, “At the Edge
of the Woods,” and realize that
the author almost presciently cap-
tured this very recognizable zeit-
geist of alienation and paranoia
more than 15 years ago.
This slim novel of four chap-
ters, a couple of which had been
published previously as stand-
alone pieces, was translated by
Juliet Winters Carpenter, a pro-
fessor emerita of Doshisha Uni-
versity in Kyoto, Japan, who
now lives on Whidbey Island,
Washington.
These stories are centered on a
couple and their young son, who
recently have moved to a foreign
country and live in a house at the
edge of the woods.
The experiences of this family
are told from the man’s point of
view. His wife has become preg-
nant and, having suff ered a mis-
carriage before, she travels back
to her original homeland so that
her parents can look after her for
the duration of the pregnancy.
In her absence, the father and
little boy make do. Their remote
location and foreigner status
mean that their interactions with
others are limited. They keep the
television on to fi ll the house with
chatter.
Only the mailman stops by
regularly, but he is a sinister char-
acter who only ever seems to
deliver unsavory news. Missing
his wife, our narrator often con-
jures up memories of the things
they did when they were together.
He can hear her voice and the
way she teases their son. Some-
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times his dreams of her take a
dark turn.
In his waking hours, he begins
to hear noises coming from
the woods — rustling leaves, a
coughing sound and the intima-
tion of laughter. It doesn’t help
when the mailman suggests that
there may be malign imps afoot.
The father warns his son not
to venture into the thicket of
trees alone, but the child doesn’t
always listen, and one day he
emerges from the woods, hand
in hand with a scarcely clothed
crone.
Sometimes the boy cries for no
apparent reason. The perplexed
father reasons that “perhaps he
had already fi gured out that the
day was coming when he would
not have tears enough for the
multitude of sorrows and pains
that lay ahead...”
And indeed on television
there does seem to be an unset-
tling surge of fl oods and fi res, and
an endless parade of refugees.
“At the Edge of the Woods” is a
psychological tale, the plodding
rhythm of mundane tasks fre-
quently interrupted by a swirl of
superstition and nightmare.
The increasingly unreliable
narration cedes to discrepancies,
uncertainty and chaos, and the
bewildered reader will totally feel
the father’s consternation when
he says, “I felt as if I were living
in a peculiar abyss of time and
place.”
This work, masterfully exe-
cuted, is both intriguing and
unsettling, an interesting choice
for translation.
The Bookmonger is Barbara
Lloyd McMichael, who writes this
weekly column focusing on books,
authors and publishers of the
Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at
barbaralmcm@gmail.com.
Juliet Winters Carpenter