Weasels in the Attic
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
From the acclaimed author of The Hole and The Factory, a thrilling and mysterious novel that explores fertility, masculinity, and marriage in contemporary Japan In three interconnected scenes, Hiroko Oyamada revisits the same set of characters at different junctures in their lives. In the back room of a pet store full of rare and exotic fish, old friends discuss dried shrimp and a strange new relationship. A couple who recently moved into a rustic home in the mountains discovers an unsettling solution to their weasel infestation. And a dinner party during a blizzard leads to a night in a room filled with aquariums and unpleasant dreams. Like Oyamada’s previous novels, Weasels in the Attic sets its sights on the overlooked aspects of contemporary Japanese society, and does so with a surreal sensibility that is entirely her own.
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What a weird little book.
There's three stories that are interconnected and all told from the same unnamed narrator. He seems like a rather average guy whose more or less happily married to his wife, the only struggle being that they have yet to become pregnant.
We start off with the announcement of a death, whose his friends friend that he met once at the fish shop the friend owned. A wealthy kid living off of his family's money and enjoying his hobby with a fish shop where he breeds his fishes. Our narrator reminisces to when he met him, his friend having taken him there to the shop to drink and have a general good time. But surprise, the guy is married and his wife had just given birth.
The second story is our narrator and wife going out to the rural side to see his friend and his new wife. His friend recently purchased a new home and is having immense regrets because there's a weasel infestation in the house.
In the second story is where we get immersed into unsettling territory. The descriptions of the weasels in the attic space, and how though even one is captured in a trap there's another weasel to take it's place immediately afterward, is just gross and creepy. The noises they hear, the rash his friends wife has developed, how they can never sleep... truly a nightmare.
That arc ends with our narrators wife describing an absolutely horrid memory of her being young and her parents drowning a weasel they found in the home. A weasel infestation was never her fate because apparently the weasel they drowned was the mother weasel, and the weasels screams were warning to her babies to get out of the house and it wasn't safe there.
Third story has the couple returning to his friends house in the country side, the weasel problem being gone (under assumption that his friends used his wife's methods to get rid of them.) His friends wife just had a baby and they went to celebrate and see the new bundle of joy. A snow storm comes and it's worse than expected forcing them to stay the night at the friends house. During the night our narrator has a fever dream, regarding to a fish in the guest room that his friend owns called boney tongue (circling back to the first story.) the novel ends somewhat abruptly with a vague premonition from his friends neighbor that his wife is pregnant, and his wife and his friends wife wandering up the mountain.
All stories connected give the novel a general theme or allegory to being a parent, having responsibility, and the proper/socially acceptable in and outs of woman behavior and their roles as moms and wives.
It didn't in the end feel like a complete or proper gut punch ending, but many moments throughout causes feeling unsettled and uneasy. Tense, but without much purpose. Everyone in the novel appeared rather odd and unnatural and I'm not sure if that is more so the translation or the narrative. Still, I look forward to reading more of this authors work as I enjoyed the ideas explored in the novel.
