By J.J.O’Donoghue

“Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces” brings together a beguiling mix of first-person narratives from English novelist Angela Carter’s two-year hiatus in Japan at the tail end of the 1960s, and they are as brilliant as they are bizarre.

It’s a slim volume — the longest story is shy of 30 pages — and taken together the book is a strange mix of reality and magic realism. Carter, who died in 1992, opens with “A Souvenir of Japan,” in which she recounts going to a fireworks festival an hour’s ride from Shinjuku: “Above our heads, the fireworks hung dissolving earrings on the night.” Carter is with her unnamed lover — “a connoisseur of boredom,” whose presence and long absences, playing pachinko and going out on the town, torment her. Read more

Source: The Japan Times