Aftermath Study Guide

Critical Overview

The Laws of Evening, the collection that includes "Aftermath" has received much acclaim from critics, who have noted the precision and elegance of Waters's stories. Many reviewers have praised Waters for creating stories that give a human face to the generation that lived in postwar Japan. As Edel Coffey noted in the preface to an interview with Waters in Ireland's Sunday Tribune, "Indeed the stories certainly surpass the usual images we are offered of Japanese culture and Yukari Waters manages to show the humanity behind the societal rules." Similarly, an anonymous reviewer writing in Publishers Weekly lauded Waters's collection noting its sad but hopeful tone: "Wistful yet optimistic, these tales of inevitable cultural mutation, and of the unspoken fear and shame of an older generation wrenched from its prewar world, herald the arrival of a brave.....

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