SOURCE: "Jinxed," in The New York Times Book Review, February 27, 1994, p. 23.

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

Like comic books for businessmen and green-tea ice cream, Banana Yoshimoto is a Japanese phenomenon that Americans may find difficult to understand. Though her previous novel, Kitchen, got mixed reviews in the United States, it was a best seller in Tokyo, and she is particularly attractive to the teen-age and young-adult set. Her protagonists tend to be young women adrift, sliding away from family into sensuous romance. The loosely constructed episodes are meant to evoke a mood of what the Japanese call "aware," a contemplative sadness akin to the original meaning of melancholy. In between are pregnant conversations, strange coincidences, erotic interludes and lyrical passages on the weather.

N.P., described as a novel, is actually a series of stories. A Japanese writer...