Hiroko Oyamada’s latest novel—coming on the heels of The Factory and The Hole—is a wonder of narrative economy and quiet suspense. At under 100 pages, it’s easy to tear through in a single sitting, but its taut, unsettling scenes will stay with you long after you put it aside.
— Literary hub (Favorite Books of 2020)
From the acclaimed author of The Hole and The Factory, a thrilling and mysterious novel that explores fertility, masculinity, and marriage in contemporary Japan
In three interconnected scenes, Hiroko Oyamada revisits the same set of characters at different junctures in their lives. In the back room of a pet store full of rare and exotic fish, old friends discuss dried shrimp and a strange new relationship. A couple who recently moved into a rustic home in the mountains discovers an unsettling solution to their weasel infestation. And a dinner party during a blizzard leads to a night in a room filled with aquariums and unpleasant dreams. Like Oyamada’s previous novels, Weasels in the Attic sets its sights on the overlooked aspects of contemporary Japanese society, and does so with a surreal sensibility that is entirely her own.
Hiroko Oyamada’s latest novel—coming on the heels of The Factory and The Hole—is a wonder of narrative economy and quiet suspense. At under 100 pages, it’s easy to tear through in a single sitting, but its taut, unsettling scenes will stay with you long after you put it aside.
— Literary hub (Favorite Books of 2020)
The Factory, The Hole and Weasels in the Attic…flicker between mirage and deadpan realism, and lurk in the imagination like a haunting.
— Nathaniel Rich, NYRB
Eerie, mesmeric.
— Dustin Illingworth, The New York Times
Weasels in the Attic teems with tropical fish and the eponymous weasels, whose lives and deaths reveal the precariousness of parenthood and family.
— Ploughshares
The specter of snow melting, thus freeing the narrator and his wife from the mountain home in which they’re stranded, unspools deliciously backward in this consistently surprising story from one of the brightest writers in Japan.
— Vulture
As in Oyamada’s earlier novels, Weasels in the Attic lingers on the grotesqueries of everyday life with a subtle, deadpan humour.
— Metropolis Japan
The acclaimed author of The Factory and The Hole returns with this new installment that might be her strongest, most memorable work yet. Just like the last two titles, Weasels in the Attic is a thin book totaling less than 100 pages…The book simmers with eerie tension and bursts with unforgettable monologues.
— NPR
Horrific and scary, while at the same time affirming and beautiful.
— The New Republic
Surreal and mesmerizing.
— Hilary Leichter, The New York Times
Nothing feels fixed; everything in the book might be a hallucination.
