Book Review No.11 – Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa

I read a book by Yoko Ogawa earlier this year called ‘The Housekeeper and the Professor’ (You can find my review of it here). I loved it. So, when I saw another Yoko Ogawa book during one of my trips to the bookshop recently, I couldn’t resist getting it. It was ‘Hotel Iris’. It was a book which one could finish in a day. I finish reading it today and here is the review.

Summary of the story

I am giving below the summary of the story as given in the back cover of the book.

In a crumbling, seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet, seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk as her mother fusses over the off-season customers. When, one night, they are forced to eject a prostitute and a middle-aged man from his room, Mari finds herself drawn to the man’s voice, in what will become the first gesture of a long seduction.

The mysterious man lives quietly as a translator on an island off the coast. A widower, there are murmurs around town that he may have murdered his wife. Mari begins to visit him, but as he initiates her into a dark realm of both pain and pleasure, she finds herself also attracted to his earnest young nephew. As Mari’s mother and the police begin to close in on the illicit affair, events move to a dramatic climax.

What I think

I had a mixed feeling about ‘Hotel Iris’ after I finished reading it. On the positive side, Yoko Ogawa’s prose is soothing and as beautiful as ever – like the early morning breeze or like the music of a quietly flowing river. Because of Ogawa’s prose the pages keep flying and reading the book was a breeze. There are also beautiful lines which come up in the book time and again which are a pleasure to read. From this perspective I really enjoyed reading the book.

From the perspective of the story, it looks like this is one of the books that Ogawa wrote in her earlier years as a writer when she was probably in a mood to experiment. One of the things that a new author struggles with, is to decide on whether to give an erotic theme to a story or not and how much she / her can push the boundary and still stay on the side of literature rather than venturing into the side of soft-porn. It is a difficult decision as the dividing line between the two sides is really thin and it needs a really talented author to pull it off. Writing a novel is also an act of rebellion. Aspiring writers or newly published writers tend to ignore the market and write what they want about the things that are close to their hearts or about things which showcase their freedom as writers or about things which will make a controversial point. Some writers might want to write about rebellious things in their books, which probably they wouldn’t talk about in real-life. To me, Ogawa, seems to have done that in this book – by trying to write a literary novel, with erotic scenes and straddling the fine line between literary fiction and soft-porn. Many of Ogawa’s fans would say that the book stays firmly on the side of literary fiction, while others might disagree with this. I have to say that Ogawa manages to do it pretty well and straddles the fine line quite confidently (though the book depicts a sadomasochistic relationship – which is filled with love though – and has quite a few BDSM scenes). The book must have caused quite a controversy when it was first published in Japan. What is it about Japanese writers (with my limited experience of reading Natsuo Kirino, Haruki Murakami and now Yoko Ogawa) that they want to take risks and straddle this fine line, sometime in their careers?

The book also has only a few characters and most of them don’t have names – the typical way in which Ogawa tells her stories. I also felt that the ending of the story was sad.

I read a review of this book in NPR (you can find it here) which went like this – “Hotel Iris, Yoko Ogawa’s tale of sadomasochistic love, is mercifully short. I say “mercifully” because this is a novel you find yourself reluctantly transfixed by. Ogawa is a writer capable of seducing readers against their will…”. Very beautifully put and very true.

Excerpts

It was difficult for me to choose passages from the book, because of their explicit content, but here are some that I liked.

I tried to imagine the goddess – slender, neck, full breasts, eyes staring off into the distance. And a robe with all the colors of the rainbow. One shake of that robe could cast a spell of beauty over the whole earth. I always thought that if the goddess of the rainbow would come to our hotel for even a few minutes, the boy in the fountain would learn to play happy tunes on his harp.

This was the first time I noticed the exquisite movement of his fingers. They were not particularly strong – almost delicate, in fact – spotted with moles and freckles; the fingernails were dark. But when they began to move, they bewitched anything they touched, casting a spell that demanded submission.

More than the pain, it was the sound that captivated me. It was high and pure, like a stringed instrument. The whip played these notes on my body, contracting the organs or bones concealed beneath the skin. I would never have believed that I could make such fascinating sounds, as though the whip were releasing wells of music from the deepest cavities in my body.

Final Thoughts

If you have seen the movie ‘Secretary’ and liked it, and if you like reading books where the writer is experimenting with a risky theme, you might enjoy Ogawa’s ‘Hotel Iris’. If the theme of the book makes you uncomfortable, it is better to avoid it.