Tertulia Logo
Sign upLog In
Cart Icon0
Cart Icon0
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: The Hole, Hiroko Oyamada

The Hole

Hiroko Oyamada

Paperback
Regular price$12.95With free membership trial$6.4750% off your first book+ Free shipping
In Stock– Ships within one business day

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

No

Reader Score

69%

69% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 6 reviews on

BookMarks logo
Asa's husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family's home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time.
One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole--a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.

Book Details

  • Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
  • Publish Date: Oct 6th, 2020
  • Pages: 112
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.10in - 0.30in - 0.28lb
  • EAN: 9780811228879
  • Categories: • Literary• Women• Absurdist

About the Author

Oyamada, Hiroko: - Born in Hiroshima in 1983, Hiroko Oyamada won the Shincho Prize for New Writers for The Factory, which was drawn from her experiences working as a temp for an automaker's subsidiary. Her novel The Hole won Akutagawa Prize.
Boyd, David: - David Boyd is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has translated stories by Genichiro Takahashi, Masatsugu Ono and Toh EnJoe, among others. His translation of Hideo Furukawa's Slow Boat won the 2017/2018 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. With Sam Bett, he is cotranslating the novels of Mieko Kawakami.

More books by Hiroko Oyamada

Book Cover for: The Factory, Hiroko Oyamada
Book Cover for: Weasels in the Attic, Hiroko Oyamada

What people are saying

Mentioner image for: 木村二郎 (Jiro Kimura)
木村二郎 (Jiro Kimura)
@see_venice
3 years

veteran writer, still struggling in this ever-changing publishing world

RT @MarinaSofia8: 'The Hole' by Hiroko Oyamada (Review) https://t.co/LlX1JfKuMf via @tony_malone

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: Jasmine Sawers through the air
Jasmine Sawers through the air
@sawers
1 year

(Gender)Queer Thai mixed writer (they/them) Staff @fairytalereview THE ANCHORED WORLD finalist for the 2023 PEN/Bingham award for debut short story collection

@writesforlife Have you read Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett? Brilliant. And I’m currently reading and enjoying At the Edge of the Woods by Masatsugu Ono. Haven’t read it yet but really looking forward to The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada.

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: New Directions
New Directions
@NewDirections
2 years

Founded in 1936 by James Laughlin, New Directions proudly publishes great literature from around the world.

"The Factory, The Hole and Weasels in the Attic...flicker between mirage and deadpan realism, and lurk in the imagination like a haunting." Nathaniel Rich on Hiroko Oyamada https://t.co/40ovmEFyz4

twitter.com
Show more

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

As Oyamada's slim, beguiling novel unfolds, the eerie atmospherics steadily ascend from unease to maximal uncanny...-- "4Columns"
The Hole magnifies the plight of some younger adults, particularly women. Work is banal. Childrearing is unappealing. And being a housewife is not, as one of Asa's older neighbors describes it, "a summer vacation that never ends." What, the novel asks, is left for a woman to do?-- "Asian Review of Books"
The Hole tells a fantastical story, as translated by David Boyd, in which increasingly bizarre illusions blend into reality, with a reclusive adult at the center. Oyamada unsettles readers, not allowing us to remain comfortable in the reality she creates, which makes for a beguiling read.-- "Booklist"
It takes a writer of great talent to mold the banality of the everyday into the stuff of art, and to build an entire world around a metaphor other writers might quickly deploy and cast aside, but Oyamada is in complete control of her talent.-- "Japan Times"
Oyamada's atmospheric literary thriller puts a fresh, gripping spin on the bored housewife set-up.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred)"
The Hole is Oyamada's second novel, and the second to be translated into pitch-perfect contemporary English by David Boyd....Brilliant.--Alex Andriesse "Reading in Translation"
Oyamada's slender novel belies a multi-layered, complex examination of contemporary disconnect and isolation so chillingly affecting that the surreal quickly turns convincingly plausible, and then all too insistently real.-- "Shelf Awareness"
Oyamada's greatest strength lies in keeping readers feeling discomfited... [The] whole narrative shudders not at mysterious creatures or secret family members but at the banality of life.-- "Spectrum Culture"
Surreal and mesmerizing.--Hilary Leichter "The New York Times"
The desire to escape the doldrums of late summer, for both the isolated Asa and the (likely lockdown-weary) reader, is telling of the current moment's general malaise.-- "The Seattle Times"
Horrific and scary, while at the same time affirming and beautiful.--Rumaan Alam "The New Republic"

What people are saying

See more