The Typing Pool

Hotel Iris - Yōko Ogawa - spoilers and mention of triggering content

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

2/5 stars

This review include spoilers and triggering content.

This is a literary fiction novel, from the first person point of view of a 17-year-old girl in Japan, having a wildly violent sexual relationship with a man in his sixties (I believe). Mari worked at her family owned hotel, alongside her emotional abusive mother. Throughout the entire book, Mari's mother was never kind. Her father was kind to her, but he died when she was very young. The hotel had mainly tourists as guests, but one night, a sex worker ran out of a room, distraught. She yelled at the man inside the room; which is when we are introduced to the translator, as Mari refers to him as. This night the incident occurred at the hotel, Mari immediately became infatuated by the translator, even though he was aggressive as he left the hotel. One day she spotted him in town, and for some reason she followed him as he got onto a boat which took him to his house on an island across from the mainland. After this meeting, he began writing her letters, basically love bombing her. Mari had to lie to her mother about going to the translator's house. During her first visit, the translator raped her, and performed very aggressive and disturbing sex acts on Mari.

I do not understand her obsession with him, and the way she spoke about him, is very unrealistic for a 17-year-old girl. For a young girl who had never been sexual with anyone, there is no way she could have had these thoughts about her interactions with him. Outside the translator's home, he was kind to Mari and grateful for her presence in his life. Behind closed doors, he demanded demeaning sexual acts from Mari, which never were consensual. Mari was outwardly scared, saying no on several occasions, but in her internal monologue, she liked (?) being submissive. He forced her to perform horrible sex acts, all while physically abusing her. Again, in real life, someone her age would never be able to process her complex relationship to the translator like she did.

I don't understand how her mother never caught in to her abuse, because she spoke about having scratches, bruises, burns on her body after her visits to his house. Her mother often told her she couldn't leave the hotel because it was so busy, but somehow Mari found time to leave. She was gone so often, that I don't understand how she never got caught.

At one point the translator's nephew visited his house, and fast-forward, Mari had sex with him. That part just didn't make sense to me. At least their sex was consensual.

By the end, Mari missed the last boat back to the mainland, so she had to spend the night at the translator's house. The next morning, as she took the boat back to go home, Mari's mother and police had been waiting for her. They thought she had been kidnapped by the translator. Mari's mother was so worried, and reassured Mari that she was now safe. We never heard her mother to be kind, so this just did not make sense of her character. The police tried to arrest the translator, but he jumped over the boat's railing, falling to his death. Then the story just ended!

I categorize this book as character development driven literary fiction, but there really wasn't any development across all the characters that gave any backstory that could have explained their personhood in relation to their behavior and perspectives.

As you can see, I gave this book a relatively low rating. To be blunt, I did not like this book. The only reason I rated it a two instead of a one, was because I liked Yōko's prose.

Final thoughts:

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