Review: 'Hit Parade of Tears: Stories' by Izumi Suzuki, trans. by Sam Bett, David Boyd, Helen O'Horan, and Daniel Joseph

What if you just went completely left-field with your fiction? If you just let your imagination go slightly twisted and wrote down the result? That's what, I think, Suzuki asked herself before she sat down to write these stories. Told in an almost disaffected and joking tone, the stories in Hit Parade of Tears are both hilarious and weird and I had a great time with them. Thanks to Verso Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 4/11/2023
Publisher: Verso Books; Verse Fiction

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom

Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy.

A philandering husband receives a bestial punishment from a wife with her own secrets to keep; a music lover finds herself in a timeline both familiar and as wrong as can be; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars; Emma, the Bovary-like character from one of Suzuki's stories in Terminal Boredom, lands herself in a bizarre romantic pickle.

Wryly anarchic and deeply imaginative, Suzuki was a writer like no other. These eleven stories offer readers the opportunity to delve deeper in this singular writer's work.

The eleven stories in Hit Parade of Tears all share a sense of the absurd happening during an otherwise completely normal life. Each story has this one thing that shifts it entirely into something so abstract you just have to keep going with it. Suzuki provides no explanation, or background, or context, she just confronts you with something weird and expects you to deal. It's not just the plots that initially discombobulated me, it is also the writing itself. I've been reading a bit more Japanese fiction lately and have therefore become more familiar with what I'd call the general tone of Japanese writing. You know how you can recognise if I a book was written by a Brit or an American, and not just because of spelling? It's a tone, a vibe, and I'm slowly dialing into the Japanese frequency of writing, I think. But I still had to really get used to Suzuki. Her writing is so... straightforward, in the sense that she just straight out says things you might otherwise build suspense around. Once I'd keyed into it, though, I did enjoy it.

Hit Parade of Tears opens with 'My Guy', a tale of either aliens or love betrayal. 'Trial Witch' was one of my favourite stories, as a woman is suddenly given some magical powers and her philandering husband suddenly finds himself drawing the short end of her experiments. 'Full of Malice' is incredibly brief but fascinating. A young woman in search of her brother, who was sent to a facility for being "slow", may or may not find herself in another dimension and in danger. It is honestly... so odd, but I can't get it out of my mind. 'Hey, It's a Love Psychedelic' honestly kind of went over my head a bit. I didn't catch the music references and so lost a bit of connection with how it played around with time, but I did find it intriguing. 'After Everything' was, I think, connected to 'Full of Malice'? It was incredibly evocative, even if it felt a little plotless. 'The Covenant' is a story about feeling like an outsider, of connecting to something not human, and yet also looking for connection. It's complex, contains murder, and gripped me! 'The Walker' feels like another story connected to 'Full of Malice' and 'After Everything', but maybe I'm reading too much into it. 'Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise' features a spacecrew of outcasts, a surprise baby, and smiling bunnies! 'Memory of Water' is a story about being disconnected from the world and yourself, bone-weary by all of it and incapable of joining it. 'I'll Never Forget' is, I think, related to Suzuki's Terminal Boredom and I did feel like maybe I missed some of its meaning, even though it can stand on its own. And finally, 'Hit Parade of Tears' was an intriguing story about long life, meaning, and freedom.

As I said above, I was very intrigued by Suzuki's writing style. There is a bluntness to it, which fits perfectly to her attitude as described in the blurb. It is a going against the expected, moving beyond the usual set-up and confronting readers with something different and slightly twisted. I was very intrigued by the premise of each story and the overarching disconnect that they speak to. As such, I did find myself feeling disconnected as well, as if nothing was really hitting me anymore, as if everything was passing by me. I think this was probably Suzuki's intention, but it did mean I had to shake off a blue feeling after finishing Hit Parade of Tears. Not every reader might enjoy that, but it was an intriguing experience for me. I'd definitely be interested in reading Terminal Boredom as well, if I find myself with the mental resources to dig myself out of the disassociation afterwards. The translations were also done very well, as far as I could tell, flowing with the tone of the story. 

The translation credits break down thus: 'My Guy' and 'Trial Witch' by Sam Bett; 'Full of Malice' and 'Hey, It's a Love Psychedelic' by David Boyd; 'Hit Parade of Tears', 'I'll Never Forget' and 'Memory of Water' by Helen O'Horan; and 'After Everything', 'The Covenant', 'Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise' and 'The Walker' by Daniel Joseph.

I give this collection...

3 Universes!

I did enjoy reading Hit Parade of Tears, although I didn't find myself connecting to each story. I was very intrigued by Suzuki's twisted protagonists and her blunt writing style, but I also found myself disconnecting from the stories a lot.