Overview

Housewife Natsumi leads a small, unremarkable life in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons:she does the laundry, goes on trips to the supermarket, visits friends and gossips with neighbours. Tracing the conversations and interactions she has with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her internal monologue,Mild Vertigoexplores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that forms a lonely life confined to a middle-class home, where both everything and nothing happens. With shades of Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante and Lucy Ellmann, this verbally acrobatic novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist and critic Mieko Kanai - whose work enjoys a cult status in Japan - is a disconcerting and radically imaginative portrait of selfhood in late-stage capitalist society.

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9781804270387

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Reviews

‘In the vertigo lurking at the depths of a very ordinary life, Mieko Kanai succeeds in uncovering the tranquillity and cruelty that exist side by side.’  —Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police ‘Mild Vertigo is an immersive, uncanny narrative held taut over eight chapters that contrasts existing and living, seeing and viewing. An enthralling horror story about tedium that pushes the reader tight up against the unmanageable moments of everyday life and the domestic.’ — David Hayden, author of Darker With the Lights On ‘A unique form of realism cultured from rhythmic, alert sentences that left my sense of the everyday altered, and made me desperate to read everything else Kanai has written.’ — Holly Pester, author of Comic Timing ‘A dizzying, kaleidoscopic novel. Bold yet simple, quiet yet choric, Mild Vertigo brilliantly captures the noisiness of a lonely life.’ — Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of The End of Nightwork ‘Mild Vertigo deftly captures the monotony of housework and the loss of self in family life, exploring a generalized sense of dissatisfaction with the options available to women in contemporary capitalism. Kanai’s beautiful and strange prose takes the reader inside the mind of a woman whose world is both mundane and disintegrating.’ — Alva Gotby, author of They Call It Love ‘Mieko Kanai is not interested in describing objects; she wants to accentuate their amorphous nature.’ — Sofia Samatar, The Paris Review ‘Laden with descriptions of objects and locations, Kanai’s detail-rich sentences offer a specificity of time and place. A subtle, thoughtful portrait of a woman chafing at the demands and constraints of domestic life.’ — Kirkus, starred review ‘For me, Mieko Kanai’s writing represents one of the high points of Japanese literature. The tiny details give shape to the everyday, the daily repetitions, the memories that come suddenly flooding back, other people’s voices – all of these described in winding, iridescent prose. Their utter ordariness, their utter irreplaceability, make for a reading experience brimming with joy from start to finish.’ — Hiroko Oyamada, author of Weasels in the Attic ‘A sharp and sleek read that questions what is automated and what it means to be knowing, in a life compartmentalized into ribbons.’ — Tice Cin, author of Keeping the House ‘[Mieko Kanai is] not interested in describing objects; she wants to accentuate their amorphous nature. ... Sections of the novel first appeared as monthly installments in a glossy magazine about bourgeois homemaking; also included are two reviews of photography exhibitions. Kanai says that these previously published articles and reviews, which appeared in different journals, were written in order to be collected as a novel. Written in order to be collected. The exhibition reviews, the advice flipped through in a women’s magazine: always a novel.’ — Sofia Samatar, author of Tender ‘Mieko Kanai’s writing – encompassing fiction, poetry and criticism – has been sorely overlooked in the English-speaking world, so the new translation of her 1997 novel Mild Vertigo is a welcome arrival. The book is a surrealistic portrayal of quotidian middle-class life in late-20th century Japan.’ — Marko Gluhaich, Frieze

'[Mieko Kanai] not interested in describing objects; she wants to accentuate their amorphous nature. ... Sections of the novel first appeared as monthly installments in a glossy magazine about bourgeois homemaking; also included are two reviews of photography exhibitions. Kanai says that these previously published articles and reviews, which appeared in different journals, were written in order to be collected as a novel. Written in order to be collected. The exhibition reviews, the advice flipped through in a women's magazine: always a novel.' - Sofia Samatar, author of Tender 'A dizzying, kaleidoscopic novel. Bold yet simple, quiet yet choric, Mild Vertigo brilliantly captures the noisiness of a lonely life.' - Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of The End of Nightwork

'[Mieko Kanai] not interested in describing objects; she wants to accentuate their amorphous nature. ... Sections of the novel first appeared as monthly installments in a glossy magazine about bourgeois homemaking; also included are two reviews of photography exhibitions. Kanai says that these previously published articles and reviews, which appeared in different journals, were written in order to be collected as a novel. Written in order to be collected. The exhibition reviews, the advice flipped through in a women's magazine: always a novel.' - Sofia Samatar, author of Tender

Author Information

Born in 1947, Mieko Kanai has worked throughout her life as a writer, poet, essayist and literary and art critic. She has published around thirty novels and short story collections, and her critical essays have been featured in Japanese newspapers and magazines for almost fifty years.

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