Review of “The Second Bakery Attack” (1985)
Murakami Haruki (writer).
Read in 2020.
Read in Jay Rubin’s English translation.
A sequel to a story I have not read: A 1981 story that sounds like a more surreal “A Small, Good Thing” (1981). Appropriately, Murakami has translated Carver. Though the basic worldbuilding is that of a modern Japanese ghost story, involving a Buddhist-derived curse of sorts, there’s a gentleness to the magical realism that makes it palatable.