I don’t want to say that I’ve reached another uninspired streak with reading, but the lure of shorter stories has definitely been stronger these days. So as I’m going on what feels like two months of waiting for one short story, I was able to digitally check out two others. Both by the author Genki Kawamura.
The first short novel I got my hands on was Exit 8. I first knew of this as a movie that came out in the past year. I was intrigued by the premise, but it honestly felt like it would be a little too scary for me. Believe it or not, books can unsettle me, sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever been outright scared by a book. So when I learned the movie was an adaptation, I went searching, only to find out that it was the adaptation of a video game! But then through just a little more digging, I found that Kawamura had turned both of those medias into a novel. The premise is that a man gets stuck in the underground after stepping off his subway car. He’s just learned that his estranged partner is expecting, but before he can really say anything meaningful he finds himself in this nightmare.
There are directions posted to help get him out of this maze, but one wrong move and it’s back to the beginning. The goal is to recognize anomalies and then turn back. That is the only way to advance. Among his time down there, he comes across two other people he believes to be stuck in the same loop, a business man and a young boy. We do get a little bit of their perspectives and likely reasonings for being down in the maze, but the story is mainly told from the man’s perspective. An act of selflessness helps the man realize that he’s ready to be a father and change his passive ways, so fear not, he does escape, but not before encountering some seriously anxiety inducing things! Upon reflection, it’s hard to see how the maze actually helped the man, it was more the boy who helped him. But I still enjoyed this read, regardless. It makes me want to check out the movie now!
The next book of Kawamura’s that I checked out was an original work, If Cats Disappeared from the World. In it, a man of only 30 years learns that he’s likely going to die within the next day of stage 4 cancer. Struck with this sudden news, he’s at a loss of what to do when suddenly, the devil appears to him, as himself, and offers him one more day of life if he just erases something from the world. I suppose I would agree to that if I’d only just learned what he did. His first act of magic is making phones disappear. Given how dependent we are on our phones, at first that one seemed a little crazy to me, but he found that no one seemed that impacted by it. At first, at least. He spent the day reconnecting with a serious girlfriend he had a dew years ago. She was blunt with him, but he ultimately found the exchange refreshing.
The next thing the devil chose to erase from the world was movies. As a die hard movie lover, I also struggled with this as much as he did. But, do I really think they are any more or less important than phones? Not necessarily. But he had a lot of close personal memories tied to movies. He thought back to a time where he was watching a film with his dad, who he’s been estranged from for several years. Though he didn’t recall details from the film, he did recall that experience with his dad. After two extra days added to his life, the final straw was when the devil suggested erasing cats from the world. Being the owner of a cat, he almost immediately said no to this. I myself did think about it for a while and came to the same conclusion. His reasons were personal. His mother, who’d died a few years prior, really loved the family’s two cats, the latter of which lived with him now. In the face of death coming for him the next day, he came to some realizations that may or may not have brought a tear to my eye.
Anyway, these were both unique and enjoyable reads! Check them out someday!