This collection...encompasses such a range of tones that it's remarkable there's a sense of a cohesive whole at all. Miyazawa...lives in the details, and when one story is about a flurry of preparations for the expected visit of the Buddha, and the next is a wicked joke about a suspiciously carnivorous restaurant, that's no small task. There's a wildness to these stories, both through the strength of Miyzawa's voice and his use of familiar fairy-tale motifs turned slightly askew, which can feel abrupt on a first read and satisfyingly subversive on a second one. Many of Miyazawa's stories resist tidiness or easy moralizing. There's certainly a sense of morality (at times it even feels like a keenly-felt wound is being lanced onto the page), and every so often there's a tidy tale about an overly-defensive rat that drives its friends away. But by and large, Miyazawa's stories are grounded by a sense of the many intersecting injustices at play in the world, for corrupt police chiefs and carnivorous slugs alike ... Not every story is a timeless classic ... But more often, these deftly-rendered stories have careful grace notes amid the everyday energy of a world in which anything can happen, and probably will. They balance chaos and kindness, the natural and the supernatural, the unsettling and the inspiring; Once and Forever is a fascinating collection from a compelling writer, and will be right at home in any library of short stories or modern folklore.
Read Full Review >>