Don’t Say Anymore Darling

Did I write about this one?  I read it awhile ago, seems like I would have.   Maybe not.

More Fumi Yoshinaga, because if you’re like me, you haven’t had enough yet.  This one’s somewhat different from her other ones in that it’s a volume of unrelated short stories (as opposed to something like “Lovers in the Night,” where the short stories are all about the same character).  The title story’s pretty funny and cute, and has a nice buildup and twist ending.  It was probably my favorite.

The volume has at least two stories which are totally not gay.  One of them, a kind of sci-fi end of the world scenario that features a really bitter girl as the last man on Earth, was not all that enjoyable as the eventual end had a point that was not that well made, or at least didn’t have time to come across properly.  The other story was about… a really awkward older straight couple.  The entire story is silently told from the point of view of the older man as he watches his new wife bumble through and kind of embarrass him at every turn.  You can feel the painfulness escalate as the story goes on, and the ending was both unsatisfying and fitting at the same time.  I liked this one too.

There’s a really, REALLY creepy sexaroid story crammed in there somewhere.  It had several NO elements to it.  We won’t talk about that one.

The last story has a more Yoshinaga flavor to it, like the first did, and is about a pianist contemplating suicide and debating over whether or not to spare his life for a younger man who may or may not be hitting on him.  This one’s very bittersweet, if a little short and awkward, and I liked it, too.

I don’t know if people who aren’t diehard fans of Fumi Yoshinaga will like this one as much, because the stories are so short and random that they can be a bit shallow and unsatisfying.  But she still portrays the character emotions the best you’ve ever seen, and there’s a wide array of different genres here which are nice to see from her, so it seems like a good thing to me.  I can see how some people wouldn’t like it, though.