Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto (4🌟)

Asleep is a collection of 3 stories, all of them sharing moments of women sleeping and having bizarre dreams. Death is also present in the stories, with characters grieving their loved ones and coming to terms with their loss.

The first story is called Nights and Night Travellers. It follows  a young woman, Shibami,  and her cousin Mari,  coming to terms with the death of Yoshihiro, Shibami's older brother. As with most of her novels, this story is about grieving, remembering the dead, not with fatalism but with peaceful acceptance.

The second story, Love Songs, follows a young woman, Fumi remembering a toxic relationship with a man who was going out with another woman, Haru. In fact she recalls more memories of Haru, who is now dead, than of her lover. This was my favourite story :)

In the last story, Asleep, we meet yet another woman who has recently lost her best friend after she committed suicide. She is going out with a married man whose wife is in a coma with little hope of recovering.

My book was published by Faber and Faber in 2001. It has 177 pages.