Planting

by Aoko Matsuda

Genres: Short Stories

Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Lu · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.5
THIS WAS SUPER INTERESTING WHAT? I didn’t engage with it suuuper well but the way it’s written works well & conceptually it’s an interesting concept

[Daedalus015 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating surreal tale of gardening. The prose is fairly clean. It is also her first story to be translated. Engages with what appears to be superflat aesthetics (see Takashi Murakami), when the planting of objects switches instantly from happy to revulsion. Lines like this support this, as she unboxes new items to plant, whose novelty is tantalizing, but whose reality is quite the opposite: "As soon as a feeling came out, the exact opposite feeling would follow." (6). There are other experimental parallels, like talking about how her labor would increase in speed, akin to the flattening of affect while working with commodities one should like but which one detests by their sheer number (7). Another superflat parallel: Her labor so intensifies that the "garden was like a mire sucking Makiko down. Like a black hole" (8). Perhaps another major sign is that the story's setting may be the United States (or very well colonized by the United States), with not only the main character's name "Marguerite" (which we only learn far later as originally "Makiko") along with references to flowers that seem stereotypically American in culture (Lily of the Valley, Violets), and a rather American-like suburban small-town scene. I haven't read too many textual uses of superflat - so I will definitely read what else Matsuda has written.

Note: Page numbers were pulled from Waseda Bungaku’s earthquake charity publication from 2011: http://www.bungaku.net/wasebun/info/c...

[Ocean G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved "The Girl who is getting married", by this same author. But this story just didn't click for me. Maybe it was a tad too ambiguous.


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