An unnamed writer is commissioned to write the biography of a famous Japanese painter who has recently died. This requires him to collect a huge amount of background information, but once started he realises he can't quite bring himself to actually get down to writing it. The war interrupts his research and the project as a whole, after it ends he reluctantly resumes his task. But as he tours the country visiting owners of works by the famous painter, he discovers a significant percentage of them are fakes. And he knows who the counterfeiter was. He becomes increasingly more interested in, and drawn towards, finding out more about the strange obscure life of the counterfeiter, than the famous painter.
The Life of a Counterfeiter, is an immaculately written story, with an underlying air of mystery. Inoue's style of writing has an elegance and a deceptive clarity in it's vision, as though this story was written with no apparently effort at all. But it is, actually, a beautifully detailed, well crafted short story, that I found an immensely enjoyable thing to read. The two accompanying stories, Reeds and Mr Geoffrey's Gloves, are linked thematically to the title story, as they are both about distinctive individuals who are not understood or even derided by those who knew them, but are intreging and loved by the narrator of the story. Inoue appears, judging from these stories, to have had a liking for the underdogs in Japanese society, who often inhabit unfulfilling lives, where silent desperation and rebelliousness sit side by side.
I've not come across Yasushi Inoue before, but I would certainly be up for reading more. He is almost yourJapanese stylist par excellence, with a deft ightness of touch and an interest in life's eccentrics and misfits.
CARROT REVIEW - 6/8
No comments:
Post a Comment