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Book Review: Saou Ichikawa, Hunchback
51 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, I review Saou Ichikawa's novel Hunchback (2023). These book reviews will drop into the feed in between interviews. You can also find the review on the YouTube channel. Go subscribe if you haven't already!
You can buy Ichikawa's novel from your local bookstore or Bookshop.org.
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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to Books Up Close Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. My name's Chris Lloyd. This is your fortnightly review. You can listen to this in this podcast feed or watch it on YouTube, whatever you prefer.
Introduction to 'Hunchback' by Ichikawa
00:00:14
Speaker
Today I'm talking about this slender little book called Hunchback by Ichikawa. And the cover is pretty startling.
00:00:25
Speaker
And This book is 97 pages, so let's call it a novella, let's call it a long short story if you want. Here's Freddy, if you're watching the video you can see the cat so I don't know whether you want to switch to video form when he's here because he likes to be involved with the videos.
00:00:44
Speaker
This book is quite startling.
Significance of the Book's Literary Award
00:00:48
Speaker
in the inside cover it says the first book by a physically disabled author to win Japan's most prestigious literary award. And the book is about disability, it's about desire, it's about writing, it's about a lot of things at the same time.
Exploring the Main Character, Shaka Isawa
00:01:03
Speaker
The main character is a woman called Shaka Isawa and she has this congenital muscular condition that means she has an extremely curved spine, she's also on a ventilator, and she's basically kind of confined to her bed in this hospice centre.
00:01:21
Speaker
And in this hospice centre, she spends most of her time online. She's doing like a kind of online course in like cultural theory that she's studying. She's also writing kind of various things for online outlets.
00:01:33
Speaker
She is writing kind of erotica stories like under a pen name that she's publishing. She's also like tweeting a lot under a fake name. So most of the time she spent in this kind of online world and the book is really good on toggling back and forth between kind of living in the online space, right? And kind of writing whatever you want in that world, pretending to be someone else or being a whole other person.
00:01:57
Speaker
And then the book then shuttles back to the protagonist's condition in her bed, having to like deal with her condition in all of its complexity and all of its
Financial and Personal Background of Shaka
00:02:07
Speaker
pain. like You really feel the intensity of the body in this story. She's really, really good at writing the body and how sensation is moving through her as she's writing, thinking, feeling.
00:02:19
Speaker
You find out very quickly that her parents basically kind of own the... hospice centre so she has no need to pay for any kind of bills in that regard. She's got loads of money that they left her. So when she does work online and she kind of writes copy for people, all of the money goes to charity. She gives it all the way instantly.
Themes and Emotional Depth of 'Hunchback'
00:02:36
Speaker
And the first half of the book you're kind of unsure I guess where the plot is going. We're very much in her mind And honestly, I didn't care. I didn't want plot. I just wanted to live in her mind because it's so visceral and interesting and funny and emotional. There's so much going on. i don't make I don't want to make it sound too intense. Like it is very funny at times.
00:02:54
Speaker
And then one of the kind of carers comes in and he has a dialogue with her. He's basically seen some of the online writing and he knows it's her. And she offers him ah kind of proposal. From there, the story kind of unravels.
00:03:08
Speaker
And i don't really want to say too much because the ending was really shocking. And... I read it one way, other people read it another way, and actually I think there are more questions to be asked about the ending than some of the reviews have suggested, I think.
00:03:20
Speaker
I don't know. i feel like Ichikawa is doing something interesting. So if you've read it, please like get in touch with me because I want to talk about it. I don't think the surface reading of the ending does enough justice. I think the writer is too clever to just do the very obvious answer.
00:03:34
Speaker
I'm not going to say too much because don't want to ruin it for you.
Exploration of Themes and Critiques
00:03:38
Speaker
But this book is so good on the intersections of disability and desire, the intersections of sexuality and the body and gender and...
00:03:51
Speaker
class and social position and all these things. Like, I don't know how she does that at 97 pages, but anyway, she does. There's a really incisive critique in there about, you know, the kind of literary world's obsession with books. And it really got me, ah it took me aback because I was like, oh no, that's me.
00:04:07
Speaker
This kind of idea of, you know, where we kind of fetishize the physical book, right, over an electronic version or an e-reader or an audiobook. And she was like, I do not have that luxury. I cannot value the physical book because I can't hold it. I can't physically hold it in that way.
00:04:21
Speaker
So every time someone aestheticizes, fetishizes the physical book, you're doing some kind of damage to her as a disabled person. And like that was a really useful, incisive critique that I was like, i need to think about this for a little while.
00:04:34
Speaker
So yeah, the book does a whole range of things. Like, I would have loved it to be longer, like I really would. ah But you know me, I love a short book. So if you can do something in 100 pages and just kind of go in, do the stuff, leave, like, I'm always going to fan of that.
Final Recommendation and Call to Action
00:04:50
Speaker
So Hunchback by Sao Ichikawa is ah definitely a recommend from me. Please go buy it in whatever form is best for you. And let me know what you think.
00:05:00
Speaker
If you're watching, please comment below on YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, please send me a message on Instagram or via the feedback form. I would love to hear from you. Until the next time, happy reading. Work after yourselves.
00:05:15
Speaker
Stay well. See you soon. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at Books Up Close and on YouTube.
00:05:30
Speaker
And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form linked in the show notes. It's really helpful to us. You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack.
00:05:42
Speaker
This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.