Reading: Suicide, Love, Incest

Grabby blog post title, right? These are all elements in Banana Yoshimoto’s NP, but they’re not what the book is about. Sorry for the bait and switch. The book is actually about welcoming a dark force into your life. Our narrator, Kazami, sidesteps a darkness bubbling from within to face one that comes crashing into her life in the form of the novel’s true protagonist—Sui. The title, NP refers to a fictional book of 97 short stories written in English by Sarao Takase, a fictional Japanese author. A cancer of sorts, the book infects all those who become emotionally invested in its language with an urge to take their lives.…