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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: 857586
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: Very good condition, wear from reading. Pages are intact and are not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged but may have spine creases from reading.
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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...
 The Dust of Teeth August 29, 2005
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
The Akutagawa Prize named after the prominent short story writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke has been awarded to whoever is considered the top new talent in Japanese literature for over the past seventy years. Past recipients include the literary heavyweights Abe Kobo and Oe Kenzaburo and more popular writers such as Murakami Ryu and Yu Miri. In 2003 two young women were awarded the prestigious award: Kanehara Hitomi, born August 8, 1983, and Wataya Risa, born February 1, 1984.
Although both novels have been translated into French, English reading audiences only have Kanehara's work available in English. Hopefully Wataya's work will be soon available in English as well, so we can see why the book caused such a stir.
Kanehara's Snakes and Earrings details the life of nineteen-year-old Nakazawa Lui. A bleach-blonde hostess who desires to have her tongue split like her boyfriend Ama's. After having her tongue pierced by Shiba-san, Lui desires to get a massive tattoo depicting a dragon and a Kirin. Instead of money, Shiba-san wants Lui to sleep with him. Although she has a boyfriend, Lui, entranced by the tattoo, willingly sleeps with Shiba-san who gets his jollies from choking the young woman. He also repeated informs her that he wants to kill her. Her boyfriend has also stated that he desired to be the one who killed her because he could not stand the thought of someone else doing so. Between two bloodthirsty men, Lui spends the rest of her time drinking, increasing the size of the hole in her tongue by inserting lower gauged studs, and working. Things seem to be in a repetitive cycle until the day Ama kills a member of the Yakuza, however, does Lui really care if something happens to Ama, an individual whose real name she does not even know?
Supposedly the main theme of Kanehara's 120-page novella is how well do individuals truly know each other. However, in my opinion, the theme is handled pretty heavy-handedly. Instead of coming out through character interaction, the theme is usually stated by Lui. "I don't know how old he is." I don't know where he works." And it is normally left at that until it is mentioned again. This theme is also common in the later works of Murakami Haruki; however, it is unfair of me to compare the works of a 56-year-old writer to those of a 22-year-old one.
Filled with kinky sex, one wonders if the novel struck more of a chord with readers because a young female author, she was 19-20 when she wrote the book, wrote on such matters than the actual literary merits of the book. However, being that Snakes and Earrings has been the best-selling Akutagawa prize-winning novel since Murakami Ryu's Almost Transparent Blue, it has created a few waves. Yet it remains to be seen if the novel and Kanehara have true staying power.
 Enthralling, Scathing, and for Everyone. May 24, 2005
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
Many of us were taught in English class that the theme of most novels can be understood as either "man against man," "man against nature" or "man against himself." And we are told that by the end of the novel, the main character should experience growth as a result of one of the above struggles. But post-modern realism does not concern itself with the convention of protagonist growth. A good example of such a novel is SNAKES AND EARRINGS, the award-winning first novel by Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara.
People always think that nineteen-year-old Lui Nakazawa, the narrator of SNAKES AND EARRINGS, is an orphan, but her parents are alive and well. There is "no trouble" in her family, she says, but her own destructive actions prove otherwise.
"Barbie-girl" Lui meets the tough-looking Ama in a Tokyo club and is drawn to his forked tongue. He explains the painful and bloody process to her, and she decides she too wants a forked tongue. Soon, Lui and Ama are an item, and she moves in with him. Before long she is also involved with the sadistic tattoo artist Shiba and then witnesses Ama beat a man to death (giving her the man's teeth as a token of his love for her). Lui seems ambivalent toward both Ama and Shiba and ponders such sad thoughts as who she would let kill her if she decided she wanted to die.
However, it is Ama who dies, the victim of horrific torture and rape, and finally Lui shows the emotion that surely has been just under the surface for a long time. But is she mourning for Ama himself or the loss of the idea of him? And if she really loved him, why does she choose to build a relationship with the man who surely killed him?
Kanehara's novel is short, 120 pages in a small hardback format, but it packs a powerful punch. Lui's story is one of disturbing alienation both from herself and those around her. No wonder everyone assumes she is an orphan; she seems rootless and needy. Lui's search for emotional feeling and connection is painful to read about because the closest she is able to come is with physical pain and practically anonymous interactions with people. After Ama goes missing she realizes that she didn't know anything about this man she was living with: she didn't know his real name, where he worked, if he had a family --- she only knew about his body and that he seemed to care for her.
Still, the point may be that Lui has not given up looking for emotional depth in the face of the emptiness she feels and experiences. That is, she is not quite yet a lost cause. But the reader senses that she is close to giving up on herself and the world. Lui does not grow or change over the course of the novel; she merely experiences as she moves from one tragic situation to another.
Kanehara's literary voice is raw and honest. SNAKES AND EARRINGS is a tale full of murder, sadism and body modification. It is a graphic, disturbing and scathing commentary on Japanese youth culture. Yet it is, in its way, enthralling and definitely powerful. It is not a novel for everyone in that it is unconventional and may even seem lurid to some readers. But for adventure readers, it is recommendable, especially as it is the first work from Kanehara, who has a promising career ahead of her.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
 Don't February 28, 2006
6 out of 15 found this review helpful
For the award this book had recieved, I would have expected at least something. I would not recomend it to anyone, even by mistake.
 Not for the Faint at Heart June 13, 2006
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
Amazing.
This book left me flabbergasted, my head feeling like it was just thrown into a toilet bowl, my jaw dropped on my chin, and amazed at everything that just happened. I walked away stunned just as the main character.
I read this book in one day, practically from when I picked it up till the evening. It's everyday vernacular and short sentances/paragraphs/sections make it easy to read, easy to swallow, and easy to pause when you need to look away and take a breath, which you will.
It is a dark perverse story about a 19 year old Japannese barbie girl, her journey into the world of body modification, and follows the torrid affair between her two lovers.
It is gory in the detail, the author does not hide detail. Thank god she doesn't embellish too much either, but it's just enough, and straight forward enough so that there is no confusion as to what is happening. I would reccommend this book to most of my friends, but not to someone who wants a nice soft novel to make their plane ride pass faster. It will rock you, will push your limits of what you are used to, make you question yourself if you were in the situation, and will leave you feeling totally exhuasted at the end of the day.
It is a mind f*ck.
Not for the faint at heart.
I think if you liked books like Geek Love, dark comedies, you will enjoy this book. Though not a comedy (some might laugh), it is definitely on the darker side and hits home to those angsty years we all had in our teens.
Violence told in the rawest form of art June 1, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Kanehara is only 21 years old, and writes a book that wins the prestigious Japanese book prize! You know this book has to be good. I read it in one setting. It was about a Japanese girl who explores the underground realm by dating a guy with a forked tongue (he used a knife to cut it in half after his tongue piercing got big) tattoos, and death. Street fights, alcoholism, lots of sex, and weird societies merge here. It was a very disturbing book; it felt like I was watching a disturbing movie.
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