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| Snakes and Earrings (Originally published in Japan as Hebi ni Piasu) | 
 enlarge | Author: Hitomi Kanehara
Creator: David Karashima
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 853604
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 120
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0525948899
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.636
EAN: 9780525948896
ASIN: 0525948899
Publication Date: May 19, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
An underground world.
A murder.
An international phenomenon.
Snakes and Earrings. . . .
Describing a world as amoral and fascinating as the landscapes of Less Than Zero and Trainspotting, this novel about a young woman living in the violent world of Japans underground youth culture is both shocking and strangely beautiful. Enchanted by the snake-like tongue of a stranger called Ama, nineteen-year-old Lui takes a walk into another side of life. On the Tokyo streets, she finds a world where pain bleeds into pleasure. Where day fades into night. And where right turns into wrong.
An international bestseller.
Winner of the Akutagawa Prize.
Translated by David James Karashima.
A powerful portrait of the post-bubble generation.
The New York Times
"Snakes and Earrings won't get you arrested, but as you flip these pages, don't be surprised if you're looking over your shoulder.... Hitomi Kanehara fearlessly takes us into a world as inexplicable as Narnia and conveys us with graceful tenacity into the labyrinthine realm that makes up renegade Japanese youth culture."
--J. T. Leroy
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 for long bus drive... September 30, 2008
I've read this book in the bus on my way back home from summer holiday.
I must say I'm not very impressed. I was quite surprised with all recommendations and comments on the book's cover.
It was OK read for this long bus ride but nothing more than that. I couldn't identify myself with anything and anyone in the book. it was horribly unconvincing, sometimes even ridiculous.
Don't Believe the Hype! September 30, 2008
According the the rear dust jacket, and Matt Thorne (??) this book 'Owes nothing to anyone and reinvents the novel afresh'... Whoa! Just hold it right there, Mr. Thorne. Do you mean to tell me that a 118 page narrative of the absolute simplest kind (no praise intended there) - something which on a literary scale, is at about the same level as a depressive junior high-school could come up with, somehow steps over all that has been accomplished in the novel genre since c.17th? On what grounds do you make such a bold claim? Does Kanehara have a unique perspective on life? is she enlightened? insightful? Is she gifted linguistically? is she creative? Are her characters well-drawn? Does she convey and express an array of emotions? Does she enter the reader? hold their attention and leave them at some higher point - spiritually, intellectually, emotionally or linguistically, perhaps? - NO! - No! No! No! Then what?
This 'novel' - although I prefer to call it what it is and use the work 'essay', or 'story' was, in 2004 awarded the Akutagawa Prize - a prize which most often favours short stories and novellas over other more 'complete' works. Might we be so bold as to say this is not a 'serious' literary prize, and certainly (as with most awards) this was clearly a political stunt aimed at gaining some publicity for the award. The sadly ironic thing here is that in its Japanese language incarnation, this book is very tame and dare one say, rather cliche. The Japanese wildchild is dead and was buried in the late '80s! We all get it, that the Japanese are much more than grey, that they are also both black and white too.
Since being awarded this prize, the book has naturally received attention and hence arrived in its present incarnation - the 'English translation', which no doubt will be picked up and pored over by all blinded Japanophile literary freaks who hail it as a work of worth, which it clearly is not. What it is, is this; a very simply (almost boring) tale of a dysfunctional, spoiled young Japanese woman who takes a walk on the wild-side and meanders off into Japan's underworld. End of story.
Unless you still believe Japan in all temples, maiko-san and Mount Fuji, you'd have to be pretty naive and a little desperate for clues to the Japanese psyche if you picked up this 'book' and gained anything from it. I mean you only have to look inside the Vintage imprint, inside the back cover to see the 'writer's' picture; the over-sized photo of an 'average' Japanese young woman with a penchant for piercing to really see both what the story-teller and publisher are both about here. It's re-hashing the same thing, playing with stereotypes and extremes. Conflicting the real, the perceived, the imagined and the conceived.
If you are really interested in Japanese (modern) literature then I would suggest you first read everything by MURAKAMI, Haruki, starting with 'Norwegian Wood' and after that head to your nearest LARGE bookstore and see that they have in the Japanese Fiction section. There you might want to read a little more that the blurb on the dust-jacket; in fact if the dust-jacket 'shouts', better put it down and look for one that 'speaks' or preferable 'whispers'!
 Excellent. August 22, 2008
I am still in awe. I picked this book up by accident and read it in one day. It's such a raw, sexy, quick read with such interesting characters.
Give it a try
First Impressions August 12, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
First impressions about a book can often be overwhelmingly wrong, but in the case of Snakes and Earrings, my instincts were dead-on. When I first saw this book in the bookstore about two years ago, the sensual and aesthetic cover attracted me, but the book's thinness had me skeptical. I am not saying that short books are necessarily inferior to longer ones, but it takes a markedly more talented author to be able to accomplish in 100 or 200 pages what another does in 300 or 400.
The first page of the book certainly hooked and intrigued me (as it is, no doubt, meant to-- who wouldn't be intrigued by the opening words, "Know what a forked tongue is?") The book's jacket synopsis and flipping through it told me it was about a young woman in Japan's underground scene of alternative 'punkness', which included multiple piercings, tattoos, and, yes, forked tongues...on human beings.
As I flipped through the book, I sensed that it was also extreme and explicit. It seemed insubstantial. I put it down.
However, about a year or so later, I found myself occasionally still thinking about the book, primarily because of the cover.So I read it.
Unfortunately, it was everything I thought it would be.
I suppose I can't say anything because the author has the main character declare herself a masochist, but really, there are so many extremities in this book, it's hard to focus on. Lui drinks, fights, sleeps, and pierces her tongue to brutal levels. But the slightly unsettling thing is that all of this is done with such numbness that the character becomes not a magnet of sympathy but a pinnacle of depravity.
Also, the sex scenes in this book are explicit. It seemed rather misogynistic to me.
Looking at the picture of the author, I can only wonder if this book is autobiographical or not. (She, too, is a young, fairly attractive woman from Japan.)
Ultimately, the problem is not that this character (and all of the characters, come to think of it; they include a sadistic tattoo artist with multiple facial piercings who fantasizes about violence and necrophilia and a mildly immature boyfriend) is messed up--it's that the author never shows what she was really like before going into this underground world; nor does she even seem to attempt to make us understand why the character feels as she does. There's no life in this book, just dark nothingness.
Luckily, it can be read in one sitting. So, if you're curious, read it. One part of me can shrug and say it's pretty good. But the other part cannot understand why it won an award and rails against the excessive, mindless talk of violence and the empty, non-existent emotions.
 "Then must you speak of one that lov'd not wisely but too well." April 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Scratch the surface, and Kanehara Hitomi's debut novella here is just about the oldest tale there is. Yes, the good old-fashioned love triangle. "Snakes and Earrings" is in structure pretty much a contemporary permutation on this oldie but goodie that's worked for everyone from Murasaki Shikibu to Natsume Soseki, not to mention a host of romance novelists. And it works rather well here too, drawing readers into the drama and involving them--probably despite themselves, because on its surface the story is raw and repellent, grim and graphic. Set among the urban punk subcultures of Tokyo, there's the aimless girl protagonist with her vernacular nihilism, her ostensible boyfriend with the dragon tattoo and forked tongue who's gentle but prone to violent extremes of jealousy, and his friend and her lover the kindly sadistic tattoo artist (a backstabber in more ways than one, I suppose). Cue here a lot of unsettling body modifications and even more unsettling rough sex and throw in a bit of booze and then some extremely unsettling unsolved murders and you realize how amazing it is that you even care what happens to these folks. But you do, so hats off to Kanehara on that score.
If it sounds like she's torn a few pages out of Murakami Ryu's playbook, though, she likewise has a similar ability to hide little mines of serious transcendence in the sludge: the tattoo artist's aesthetic dedication and concentration, realistically amateur speculations on theology, descent into slow death and gradual resurrection. You have to really dig for these, though, whether because of the author's skill or lack thereof is somewhat hard to tell. In fact, the novella as a whole has many of the telltale marks of being a first effort, like a promising but still unripe sample from a college creative writing class. Kanehara often makes the mistake of telling rather than showing. The storytelling can be clumsy and artificially obvious in spots, and the characters not always consistently rendered. The ending is abrupt and largely unconvincing. And yet for all that, the story has a lot going for it and, while no classic, is definitely a worthwhile read from a writer with a lot of potential. Besides, if nothing else, bizarre love triangles are never boring.
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