Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto "favors short novels that gradually reveal thin, almost translucent layers of her characters' personalities," as a critic for Publishers Weekly once explained. The author has become a worldwide phenomenon, with...

In the heyday of punk rock, it was often said in favor of bands like the Ramones that the great thing about a three-minute song is that even if you don't like it, it'll be over shortly. But while brevity seems to bring vitality...

If Amrita was set in Surrey, no one would give a damn. Thank heavens for tatami mats, bamboo blinds and the smell of cooking prawns, because without such automatic triggers, devoid of the rubber stamp of coolness currently bestowed by all things Japanese, Amrita...

An English novelist, biographer, and critic, Fitzgerald is the author of several novels, including The Golden Child (1977), Offshore (1979), and Innocence (1986). She is known for combining a humanistic approach and a compressed, witty narrative style in her fiction to reveal the strength and nobility of her characters as they cope with life in contemporary society. In the following review, she contends that the pieces included in Kitchen emphasize the theme of coping with loss.

In the following review. Galef argues that NP suffers from superficiality and poor writing.

In the following review, Cohen offers praise for NP.