SOURCE: "The Catcher in the Rice," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 10, 1993, pp. 3, 7.

Grimson is an American novelist and short story writer. In the following review, he perceives a youthful, innocent quality and an emphasis on family life as both the strengths and weaknesses of Kitchen.

I had been really looking forward to reading Banana Yoshimoto. I've long been a fan of Japanese fiction, from the emotionally cryptic but cumulatively powerful work of Nobel Prize-winning Yasunari-Kawabata to the "most Western," sex-and-violence-obsessed Yukio Mishima, plus Tanizaki, Kobo Abe, Yoshiyuki—almost everything translated has been worth reading, with many surprises to be savored along the way.

Banana Yoshimoto has been mentioned along with Haruki Murakami (author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and A Wild Sheep Chase) as part of a new generation of Japanese novelists, and Murakami is amazing, just what the art calls for...