熱帶魚

by Shūichi Yoshida, 吉田修一, 林雅慧 (Translator)

這本作品集是一部現代生活的狂想曲，作者吉田修一擅長用他特有冷漠的筆調，真實地描寫出都會男女微妙的情愫及人性中耐人尋味的劣根性，處處透露著詭譎的幽默，以及對都市中人與人之間看似緊密其實孤獨的關係，傳達出淡淡的不信任感。

本書共收錄了三篇精采的短篇小說，分別是《熱帶魚》、《綠色豌豆》和《陣風》，文字的氛圍非常有趣，以三種截然不同的男性角度刻劃三種在都會中的心情。

《熱帶魚》的主角熱忱而孤獨，常常做出自己也無法解釋、極度不合邏輯的事情；
《綠色豌豆》的主角是一個嗜謊者，令讀者在那些看來無關痛癢的謊言裡彷彿看見自己；
《陣風》中講述一個從都市到海邊打工的男性，與女主人發展出的莫名情愫。

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Shūichi Yoshida (吉田 修一) was born in Nagasaki, and studied Business Administration at Hosei University. He won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers in 1997 for his story "Saigo no Musuko", and the Akutagawa Prize in 2002 (the fifth time he'd been nominated for the prize) for "Park Life". In 2002 he also won the Yamamoto Prize for Parade, and for winning both literary and popular prizes Yoshida was seen as a crossover writer, like Amy Yamada or Masahiko Shimada. In 2003 he wrote lyrics for the song "Great Escape" on Tomoyasu Hotei's album Doberman. His 2007 novel Villain won the Osaragi Jiro Prize and the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award, and was recently adapted into an award-winning 2010 film by Lee Sang-il.

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple yet beautiful book describing three lonely souls and solitary in the modern metropolis of Tokyo, echoing with the hearts of the readers who are living in a big city where the society is pragmatic and utilitarian, and the relationship between individuals is terribly distant. In this book, the sentences written by Yoshida are very simple without too many descriptive decorations or adjectives. And there is no climax in the whole book. Yet, one can feel the extraordinary loneliness and frustration between every single word, between every single sentence, throughout the entire book. What left in the reader's mind after reading "Tropical Fish" is loneliness, a stronger loneliness than that before starting to read this book. There is also no explicit ending or causality of each story (there are three individual stories in the book), yet readers can indulge in their world of imagination, finishing the story according to their own life experiences as well as their own unique cognition of the world. "Tropical Fish" is an artistic and poetic book which I highly recommend to those who love to indulge themselves in the great loneliness given by a urban city.