Yoko Igawo; trans. Stephen Snyder
Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder, unfolds in the first-person point of view of seventeen-year-old Mari who works in a seaside hotel.
Mari, whose father died when she was young, helps her mother run their hotel. She sits behind the reception desk, cleans, cooks, and performs a multitude of tasks. Although her mother is cruel and abusive, Mari offers no resistance. She is docile and complies with her mother’s incessant demands. But when a middle-aged man and his prostitute are thrown out of the hotel for screaming at each other, we learn Mari is not all she appears to be.
Mari is intrigued by the middle-aged man and follows him around town. When he confronts her, they strike up a conversation. He reveals he is a translator and lives alone on a nearby island. He seems polite, reserved, and treats Mari like a delicate flower. But when they go to his home, his persona undergoes a radical shift and he launches into a variety of sadistic sexual practices. In diction that is clinical and unemotional, Mari describes a series of horrifying, sexual activities she is forced to endure, including bondage, beatings, rape, groveling on all fours, torture, humiliation, and submission. The descriptions are graphic and disturbing. Not only does docile, timid Mari enjoy these sexual encounters, she keeps coming back for more.
This unusual novel is populated with unusual characters and social misfits. In addition to the translator with a penchant for sadistic sexual activity, Mari contends with her domineering mother, a kleptomaniac cleaning lady, and the translator’s tongueless, mute nephew.
Yoko Ogawa also wrote the tender and beautiful love story, The Housekeeper and the Professor. Yet the two novels cannot be more different. Hotel Iris is strange and baffling in so many ways. Is it about a young girl’s sexual awakening? Is it about a young girl’s rebellion against the restrictions imposed by her mother? Is it about a young girl seeking a substitute for her deceased father? Is it about sadomasochism and why some derive pleasure from it? Is it about a twisted love affair? Is it about how pain and suffering can mingle with pleasure? Is it about two people, full of self-loathing, who feel neglected by the world around them, and who turn that anger towards themselves and each other? Is it all of the above?
I wish I knew the answer. But, to be honest, I am totally flummoxed by the novel and cannot explain the why or the what or the wherefore. This novel was not for me. Definitely not for me.