Publishers Weekly
★ 05/15/2023
Kobayashi (Trinity, Trinity, Trinity) grapples with nuclear power’s long shadow over Japanese society in her fascinating collection. Throughout, Kobayashi contrasts nuclear power’s destructive and constructive capabilities. In the title story, she traces the life of Yō ko, who’s born after the bombing of Nagaski and dies shortly before the explosion at Fukushima. In “Precious Stones,” a standout among many strong entries, chemotherapy saves an ailing mother’s life. The same story also details how advancements in nuclear technology led to mass production of synthetic jewels. Woven together, the twin story lines illustrate how nuclear power has become inextricable from daily life. In starkly lyrical prose, “She Waited” follows the Olympic torch’s journey through Nazi Germany and illuminates the connections between sports and fascism. Other stories enter more enigmatic and speculative territory. “See” imagines a drug that causes temporary blindness, which users take to experience a kind of sensory deprivation. For “The Flying Tobita Sisters,” Kobayashi envisions a human world where everyone has wings, and the concept of bipedal life is revolutionary. With recursive events and characters, the author makes the most of her core themes. It’s a knockout. (July)
From the Publisher
"Fascinating . . . starkly lyrical . . . It’s a knockout."
—Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
"As often as Kobayashi roots her work in historical and scientific research, she also does so in rich and evocative metaphors . . . A remarkable collection."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Like a brilliant and rare gem, Erika Kobayashi's Sunrise: Radiant Stories stuns with layered intelligence and powerful prose. Each story offers a type of familial intimacy charged with profound historical clarity. How thankful I am to Brian Bergstrom for this indelible translation from one of Japan's brightest stars. This book feels like it's made of magic; that it's made of light."
—Kali Fajardo-Anstine, bestselling author of Woman of Light
"Reading Erika Kobayashi‘s stories is almost like getting to know modern Japan through a poetry-science lab experiment. Kobayashi mixes her fascination with the aftermaths and consequences of WWII and the social issues of contemporary Japan with a kind of child-like curiosity that make her story both complex and accessible. Nearly every story gives the impression of a mysterious chemical reaction that is happening before the reader’s eyes. A mesmerizing collection."
—Prabda Yoon, author of The Sad Part Was
"Kobayashi's uncanny stories probe for the contacts between our most intimate lived experience and the awesome yet subtle cosmic forces that permeate it, from atomic radiation to the ruthless arrow of time. Bergstrom's rich, graceful translation offers us the chance to peer over Kobayashi's shoulder as she works these experiments, holding our breath for the next fraught and wonderful discovery."
—Theodore McCombs, author of Uranians
"Combining a sense of daring with a sense of wonder, Erika Kobayashi's Sunrise: Radiant Stories presents boldly speculative visions side by side with intense and finely wrought everyday moments. Throughout this striking collection, Kobayashi creates surprising space for her reader to eavesdrop on intergenerational conversations between the past, the present, and imagined futures that seem to glow just over the horizon."
—Lee Conell, author of The Party Upstairs
"Erika Kobayashi’s stories are told with so little artifice that one might think them fairy tales, did they not float like islands adrift on a dark sea of history."
—John Whittier Treat, author of First Consonants
"I loved Erika Kobayashi’s Trinity Trinity Trinity, so I am lining up for her collection of strange and reflective connected stories about nuclear power and its effect on Japanese people and society, especially its women."
—Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-05-09
A collection of stories about nuclear power and its effects.
Japanese author Kobayashi’s second book to appear in English explores ground previously traversed in the novel Trinity, Trinity, Trinity (2022). This is not a complaint: Kobayashi, who is also known as a visual artist, doesn’t cannibalize her own work. Her interest in atomic energy and its insidiously long-reaching effects on Japanese society tends to be deep and wide-ranging rather than repetitive. Kobayashi’s stories emphasize the experiences of women and frequently veer into the speculative realm. In “Hello My Baby, Hello My Honey,” a woman goes into labor in the summer of 1945. But is she giving birth to a baby or to a bomb of her own? As often as Kobayashi roots her work in historical and scientific research (“The sun is 1,400,000 kilometers in diameter,” she informs us in “Sunrise”), she also does so in rich and evocative metaphors. In “Shedding,” which Kobayashi apparently wrote at the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown in Japan, a mysterious illness is spreading: The infected lose the ability to speak or to process language at all and are eventually encouraged to kill themselves. Even those who avoid suicide “lost their words completely,” Kobayashi writes. “These poor souls were called empty shells. An empty shell—as a person loses words one by one, soon their most distinguishing feature becomes their lack. Their lack of words. Tantamount to a lack of life, of existence.” But as this passage also makes clear, Kobayashi has the unfortunate habit, every once in a while, of hitting her mark a little too squarely on the nose. It’s OK, you want to assure her; we get it; no need to spell it all out.
A remarkable collection marred only by occasional heavy-handedness.
