The Night of Baba Yaga - Akira Otani
Translated from Japanese by Sam Bett.
I’m unsure how I felt about this one. It’s bleak and unrelentingly violent, filled with absolutely abhorrent characters with very few (if any) redeeming features - including the protagonist, who is only separated from the Yakuza who she’s forced to serve by the fact that she doesn’t want to see dogs mistreated. She’s forced into a life of crime through threats of rape and mutilation, but she was already a deeply violent, unpleasant person, and the only thing that really changes is that she’s now Yakuza.
This is incredibly fast paced, to the point that at times it feels more like reading an outline or a synopsis than actually experiencing the story. And I think this harms it, because the unrelenting, often depraved violence (this is a book that features a character being given a gift of a box of severed penises, and another character who is “raped to death”) is offset against the burgeoning relationship between Shoko and Shindo, and this relationship is never given any time to breathe on the page. They go from hating each other to being incredibly close in the space between chapters, and then the next thing we know they’re on the run together and living as lovers for 40 years, and then the book is over. The novel seems to reach for an emotionally charged ending, but we don’t have enough to work with for it to really land.
Despite all this, and despite often not caring for the writing style, there’s something really compelling about The Night of Baba Yaga. I read it in one sitting and I think largely enjoyed it. There’s a book I could have really loved in here if it had just slowed down a little and given me a bit more to get my teeth into. I genuinely can’t tell if the things I didn’t like outweigh the parts I did like with this one, which I think puts it firmly in “it’s fine” territory for me.