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Hello and welcome! My name is Emma (I write fantasy under the name E. M. Epps). This blog features my Two-Paragraph Book Reviews. One paragraph from me. One from the book. Here's why I keep it short.

You are here: Home > Review: “Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids” by Kenzaburo Oe
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids

Review: “Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids” by Kenzaburo Oe

Image Emma 9 September 2010

Neither thumbs up nor thumbs down for Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe. Literature.

A beautifully written book that is not in the slightest bit enjoyable to read. (Nor, in case you’re wondering, do I feel like a better person for having read it.) Weirdly tame and uncreative juvenile delinquents are marched to a village, to be shortly thereafter abandoned as the villagers flee the plague. Nothing good happens: something so unsurprising that it’s almost boring. Nevertheless, if you like a good dose of grim, I would indeed recommend it just for the lovely clear evocative writing.

“Nonetheless, for aliens captured like wild beasts to be safe before others watching them, it is best to lead the will-less, eyeless existence of a stone, flower or tree: a purely observed existence. My brother, since he persisted in being the eye that watched the villagers,  was struck on his cheeks by thick yellowish gobs of spittle rolled on the women’s tongues, and stones thrown by the children. But, smiling, he would wipe his cheeks with his large bird-embroidered pocket facecloth and go on staring in wonderment at the villagers who had insulted him.”


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Posted in book review, books, Japanese, literature, neutral
Tagged notw, translation
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Cold Sandwiches and All: A Romantic Comedy

Mrs. Fromish's Guests

The Interpreter's Tale: A Word with Too Many Meanings

The Portrait of Geraldine Germaine

You Made My Heart a Hunter

To Hell and Back Again

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E. M. Epps is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. (That's what they tell me I have to say. This is not a lucrative venture, but if you do decide you want to read one of the books I link to, and your neighborhood bookstore hasn't got it, then it would be simply lovely if you were to go to Amazon via one of my links. That may get me 10c or so and then if a bunch of you do that maybe I would get myself a cup of tea or something like that. If you're feeling nice.)

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