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People From My Neighbourhood

by Hiromi Kawakami · 2020

From the author of the internationally bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo, a collection of interlinking stories that masterfully blend the mundane and the mythical—“fairy tales in the best Brothers Grimm tradition: naif… more

8 quotes ★ 3.48 (13,578) Fiction

Quotes from the Book

Even the smallest hole is enough to send a balloon spiraling to the ground. The falsification of memory is like that. All it takes is one individual who remembers the truth, said Romi, for the whole edifice to collapse.
9
Humans change over time. I certainly have. I’ve aged and become grumpy.
7
For the first time in ages, we had a no-gravity alert. ‘This is the Disaster Preparedness Office speaking. We have been informed that there is an eighty per cent chance that a no-gravity event will take place between two and five o’clock this afternoon. Please remain indoors during those hours. If you must go out for reason, please make sure you are well weighted down. This has been a message from the Disaster Preparedness Office.
6
He tried to convince them that, since he was already in his late forties, their marriage might be more of a tea-drinking relationship.
5
You mean they’re ghosts?’ ‘Ha-ha-ha. Yep, you could say that, but women are women. They’re still fun to have around, even if they look sort of blurry and don’t have legs.
2
It depends. Everyone hears different music. The music that rules their destiny. It’s no joke—music really does determine your destiny, you know.
1
According to him, the best remedy for loneliness was an medicine made from a combination of antibiotics eye and boiled broccoli. A prescription was required for the antibiotics, but Dr Miranda said he could give me one whenever I needed it.
Since the shadow belonged to a very old man, it toured easily? So when Kiyoshi started running, it began to gasp and wheeze in the most theatrical way. Then it verbally attacked him. ‘The dammed thing’s always threatening me,’ Kiyoshi grumbled. ‘Accused me of trying to kill it, says it’ll send me to hell.

About Hiromi Kawakami

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About the book

From the author of the internationally bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo, a collection of interlinking stories that masterfully blend the mundane and the mythical—“fairy tales in the best Brothers Grimm tradition: naif, magical, and frequently veering into the macabre” (Financial Times).

A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a t­ree; a schoolgirl who keeps doll’s brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever heard of. These are some of the inhabitants of People From My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday—the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office—slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six

Book details

First published
2020
Genre
Fiction
Goodreads rating
3.48 (14k ratings)

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