Kitchen is subsumed in grief. Each part of the story is centered around the death of one or more individuals, who through their passing have prompted the narrator and other characters to go forth on their own personal journeys of coming to grips with what has been left to them. What is missing, an absence that at first bewildered me but one that I now see as beneficial, is the pomp and circumstance that usually accompanies such events. There is no factoring in of all the usual aspects of funerals, mourning rituals, all those standards imposed upon individuals by the weight of tradition and the history of society. In a word, this story has no interest in the attempts of life to make death a thing that can not only be dealt with methods of logic, but also bureaucratic. The sudden death of loved ones is a unifying aspect of both stories. They all find awkward support from each other, and one finds solace in kitchens and food, another in jogging (and the river that had divided them, been their meeting place, and was ultimately where they were separated for ever). Avoiding responsibility, like lying, should be practiced even when not strictly necessary if one really wishes to stay at the top of one's game. Still, the inability to bi-locate leads to occasional and unavoidable assignment of responsibility in one's absence, like when the book club (while I was at work) recently assigned me to choose a book for the coming reading season. Perhaps my real error occurred days earlier, when I mentioned to the Long Suffering Wife (LSW), a fellow book club member, that the book club's list of potential reads never included the micro-history, a genre of which I am very fond. A couple of days ago, I watched a film called Millenium Actress, a Japanese anime film centered around the life of a once wildly popular Japanese film star. I loved it for its lovely story as well as its wonderful animation, but most of all for its peculiar disregard of many of the 'rules' of film that I hadn't realized I unconsciously followed until they were subverted. This sort of bending and breaking of my own sensibilities into something I had never considered something that would work is rampant in this book here, on a much more heartbreaking level. As both the film and the book are Japanese, there could be a correlation that other partakers of that particular cultural entertainment would be familiar with, but I shy away from labeling it as something inherent on a sociocultural level. Instead, I will describe it on my own terms, and see what happens from there. Now a powerful man, Zemurray, concerned about Adolf Hitler’s atrocities against the Jewish people, used his considerable wealth and other resources to help establish a Jewish foothold inIsrael. Cohen makes clear that Zemurray, although not exactly an observant Jew, acted decisively and forthrightly when asked to help. Citing his World War II efforts, Cohen says Zemurray “involved himself in the war effort as much as possible, volunteered, hosted, contributed... [did] everything but fight, and would have done that, if not for his advancing years.”

Without pesticides, most of the bananas currently available in supermarkets would disappear. This is because almost all of the bananas in Europe and over half of the bananas in the world are of the same variety. The Cavendish banana saved the global banana market mid-last century when an unstoppable fungus emerged. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto comprises of two stories. One is a novella (Kitchen) and the other is a short story (Moonlight Shadow). Both the stories center around two young women as protagonists and their perceptions of life and death. (Kitchen) being my favorite of the two so, I'll be talking about that one here. Kitchen es un libro de personajes rotos descritos con elegancia. Es un libro que habla de la muerte como lo que es, totalmente natural e irremediable. Morirán personas amadas de tu vida así como el río fluye, encontrarás con quien tomar un té después y buscarás la forma de que ese dolor desaparezca, o de hacerte creer que ha desaparecido.The story itself follows the paths takeb by Mikage and Yuichi (who suffers another tragedy of his own one which fits the trans-character dies first trope) and the choices they make, with food a common theme. This quote from the novel's setpiece highlight when Mikage takes a long taxi journey to 'rescue' Yuichi from an inn in an area where the only food served is variations on tofu, and ends up trying to scale the hotel balconiees to access his room while carrying a bowl of katsudon. Charming, ephemeral and semi-absurd. It's an appealing story in which the darkness is belied by a soft quirkiness. Zemurray died in his palatial New Orleans home in 1961 at the age of 84. Today, many of his descendants remain involved in Central America, as anthropologists, art experts, and in other academic pursuits. Perhaps they did come to understand the workings of Sam’s machine even though he never did. It is likely that sitting in a bowl on your kitchen table or sideboard is the fruit of the largest herb in the world - a banana. I didn't like this book. It comprises a novella (Kitchen) and short story (Moonlight Shadow), but I'm not sure how much is the book's fault, and how much can be attributed to being set in an unfamiliar culture (Japanese teens/twenties), possibly bad translation, and that although the atmosphere is contemporary, it was actually written and set nearly 30 years ago.

I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit,’ Eriko tells Mikage, ‘ It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me.’ Life will always be hard, but finding love and happiness must still go on and we must always get up and keep going. ‘ Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.’ There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.” The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White the catching the light (ting! ting!). Maybe YAs would relate to the characters better than I did (I have no idea), but I'd be reluctant to recommend it to them because of the next problem... Kitchen and its accompanying story Moonlight Shadow comprise the first novella by award winning Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto. Both stories are told through the eyes of young women grieving following the death of a loved one, and deal with how that death plays a profound role in relationships going forward. Told in straight forward prose leaving nothing to chance, Yoshimoto tells two elegant stories.Here the narrator is Mikage Sakurai, a university student, who has lost her grandmother, her last surviving relative (her parents died when she was young) and has only her kitchen (see the opening quote) left for comfort. Having stumbled across his first banana before the turn of the century, Sam had become a major factor in the banana trade by 1910. Already then, he was a thorn in the side of the United Fruit Company, which commanded 60 percent of the market. Unlike most of his competitors, Sam had taken up residence in Honduras, where he worked the fields alongside his men and went out drinking with them in the evenings. He was a beloved figure throughout banana country on the Central American isthmus despite his later reputation as the personification of American imperialism and exploitation. This is the story of Mikage Sakurai. She's obsessed with the kitchen, which reminds me of Monica, from the famous sitcom - FRIENDS. She too finds solace and peace in the kitchen. Both Mikage's parents died when she was young. She's been raised by her grandmother since then. After the death of her grandmother, she is left all alone. Until one day, when Yuichi Tanabe showed up at her door and offered her to move into his house to live with him and his mother as a family. This is a story of self-made man, who affected the global history, especially in the USA and Latin America, and his influence was both good and bad. It is well-known that most LatAm authors, like Gabriel García Márquez in his famous One Hundred Years of Solitude, don’t like the US banana exporting companies, which came in the early 20th century, boosting hopes that the yoke of aristocratic families that ruled the Isthmus since conquistadors, will be replaced by Gringo banana men. While the latter added a bit of social mobility, they used their wealth to overthrow the aristocrats, becoming aristocrats themselves. Unlike the old families, the banana royalty had no roots in the region. Zemurray was one of these gringos, even if, after acquiring banana plantations, he, unlike most other banana business management, actually lived there. Having read Bitter Fruit (which I highly recommend!), I knew the book would eventually get to United Fruit's involvement in the '54 Guatemalan coup. I was looking forward to learning more about Zemurray's role in the coup - did he help initiate the campaign? How much did he know? Instead, this part of the book was frustratingly confusing. It's not clear at all if Zemurray even played a role. The book doesn't clearly state that he retired as President from U.F. in 1951 (the coup was three years later). But '51 is when the propaganda campaign started - so was he involved or not? The book also briefly mentions Zemurray getting updates from Corcoran (his apparent go-between with the CIA), but doesn't mention in what capacity and during what time period.

There is a lot to learn about the impact of the banana on the world. And I would bet that all, or surely most of it, is in this book. Banana was a fun, educational and often surprising read. There is a lot of information to take in, and while you may know some of the info here, it is certain that there is a bunch you do not. Did you know that the banana tree isn’t properly a tree, but a very large herb? Neither did I. Or that the bananas we eat are considered berries? Say it ain’t so. The weaknesses here made me sad. Both stories are narrated by a (different) young woman. The language is often simple, but rather than the spare beauty I vaguely associate with Japanese and Chinese writing, it's mostly just banal and awkward. That may be how angst-ridden, love-up, bereaved Japanese YAs really speak (or spoke, 30 years ago) or it may be the translation, but the result is the same. One young man takes to wearing his dead girlfriend's sailor-suit school uniform. He finds that comforting (and no one would think it odd for a girl to wear a boyfriend's jumper); a female friend is "mortified" to be seen with him, but other girls find it attractive because they assume it means he understands women. Not exactly enlightened views, but plausible, perhaps. However, they're not challenged, which tacitly condones them.

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The same man was also pivotal in the early history of Israel. As Chaim Weizmann’s favorite donor in America. As the man who pulled strings to force the release of the ship Exodus from the Port of Philadelphia and send it on its way to Israel. And as the source of ocean-going ships that carried tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from displaced-person camps in Europe to Palestine. Not to mention that he was the central figure in persuading President Truman to support the independence of Israel. Oh, and he also helped make the banana America’s favorite fruit. What else would you expect of America’s Banana King?