currently reading

So I've been reading Autofiction by Hitomi Kanehara. Finally! A book by a Japanese author that I am actually enjoying! I think a lot is lost in the translation process but feel like Kanehara's writing style actually came through in this book.

Autofiction is basically about a young woman who is obsessed with/paranoid about her relationship with her husband. You get to hear all of her internal monologues as she wrestles with her paranoia and attempts to rationalize her/others' behaviors. The novel is divided into 4 sections, each depicting the main character, Rin, at a different age (22, 18, 16, 15) so that the reader can see what events led her to become the mentally unstable person she is in the present moment. Not finished with it yet but so far I approve.

Kanehara herself is also quite interesting. She dropped out of school when she was 11 and left home. Her dad's a literary translator so she'd send him her work to edit. She won a really prestigious Japanese literary award (the Akutagawa Prize) at age 21 for her first novel Snakes & Earrings (which I have yet to read but i also supposed to be really good).

I'd also never heard of the genre "autofiction" before but it basically involves a fictional story written in autobiographical form.

* side note: attempting to stop the brain atrophy that is gradually occurring the longer I live here by compiling an ever-growing list of words (and their respective definitions) I don't recognize while I'm reading. I am hoping that I'll actually go back and learn these words but for now it is giving me some sense of initiative (not the word I was looking for but, due to said brain atrophy, my word choice is limited) in terms of preventing myself from becoming more stupid. Work brain muscles!