I love short story collections and I ESPECIALLY love short story collections where the stories are all interconnected! (Lot, People From My Neighbourhood, Moral Disorder and [kind of] Hotel World are all great interconnected collections.) Revenge was already on track to be a winner for me in that respect, and Ogawa totally delivered on all other fronts as well.
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A lot of these stories start out sort of innocuous. A woman goes into a bakery to purchase a strawberry shortcake for her son. Two hospital workers collect lost lab coats to wash. A train is delayed in a freak snow storm. But then as you're reading about these seemingly mundane situations, things begin to take a turn for the sinister. I'm not going to give away any of the creepy stuff because it's SO fun and weird, and I want you to discover it for yourself!
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The cast of characters is so wide-ranging that at first you wonder how Ogawa is going to bring them together. But while you've been reading, Ogawa has been weaving her web and before you know it, everything starts falling into place and your jaw will drop as you work out the puzzle. And it's all seamlessly translated by Stephen Snyder, the same translator for The Memory Police, so you can expect the same great reading experience! I enjoyed all of the stories, but I think my favourites were Old Mrs, J, Tomatoes and the Full Moon, and Lab Coats. But all of them had some little nugget of darkness to offer, even if it was just a hint of the macabre, it was always there.
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If you're looking for a book to turn you into the human equivalent of that meme of Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia trying to connect the dots, grab yourself a copy of Revenge and enjoy the unease!