Coin Locker Babies
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
A surreal coming-of-age tale that establishes Ryu Murakami as one of the most inventive young writers in the world today.
Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile.
Together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of late-twentieth-century Japan
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Right from the first paragraph, you know that you are in for a dark and dreary ride. A few pages in, you'll wonder why you're reading this. But a few chapters in, you'll marvel in sheer awe at Ryu Murakami's morbid writing style and plot devices - and how radically different they are, as compared to another Murakami you might know.
This rollercoaster ride follows the tale of two foster brothers, Kiku and Hashi - both abandoned at birth, and growing up warped as a result. Both find their lives extremely wanting, and as a result, find different ways to cope with the emotional baggage they lug around - one finds solace in singing, and one in DATURA - a mind-bending plot device that you have to read to believe.
This is the polarizing kind of masterpiece that you'll forever be in two minds of - in happiness that it exists, as a fine example of human creativity, and despair that a human mind managed to think up of the plot, the scenery and the characters. If alcohol were a book - this would be it. Always enjoyed in small doses, and difficult to return to once finished - because you don't want the hangover again.
Kiku und Hashi werden beide als Babies von ihren Muettern in Schliessfächern ausgesetzt. Die beiden Jungs schliessen eine enge Freundschaft im Waisenhaus und werden dann auch von einem Ehepaar adoptiert. Der bisexuelle Hashi macht sich auf die Suche nach dem Sound seiner ersten Lebensstunden und wird zum japanischen Popidol, woran er aber bald zerbricht. Kiku begeistert sich fuer Leichtathletik und das verbotene Gift Datura. Bei einer spektakulären Mutter-Sohn Zusammenfuehrung live im Fernsehen erschiesst er die Frau, die fuer Hashis Mutter gehalten wird, in Wirklichkeit aber seine ist. Zusammen mit seiner Model-Freundin Anemone gelingt Kiku es mithilfe des Giftes Wahnsinn und Mörderlust in Tokyo auszulösen.
