"like touching an icy hand", to summarize one of the reviews on the back of my copy.

I think one of my favorite things about Yoko Ogawa is that I genuinely don't know which directly her writing will go in. This is my fourth book of hers and it's most similar in tone to Revenge, a collection of short stories that slot together like 4 dimensional puzzle pieces as the book continues (and these novellas slot into that collection as well, or at least the third one does - a child dying in an abandoned fridge). But she also writes tenderly and mundane human relationships (see the Housekeeper and the Professor) as well as surreal social commentary (see the Memory Police) so I truly never know what I'm going to get. But I love all of it.

Here's one summary of all 3 novellas: a (you g) woman becomes covertly obsessed with someone else's body or bodily functions. This obsession consumes her thoughts and becomes expressed through detached cruelty towards someone far more vulnerable than her. The effects of the cruelty are not immediately apparent, but tension mounts with each page and leaves the reader out of breath.

I read that story 3 times, in 3 contexts, following 3 (possibly) different women. And I was unsettled every time.

Recommended if you enjoy subtle fiction that leaves your skin crawling for reasons you can't quite identify, are fascinated by the grotesqueness of the body, and especially if you read and enjoyed Ogawa's Revenge.