text:
Start by marking "Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii" as Want to Read:
We'd love your help. Let us know what's wrong with this preview of Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii by Kenzaburō Ōe.
Preview — Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii by Kenzaburō Ōe
Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii
Kenzaburō Ōe,
Florin Oprina (Translator)
Romanul Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii povestește experiența din timpul celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial a unui grup de băieți orfani, evacuați din școala de corecție și rătăcind în căutarea unui adăpost. După trei săptămâni, ei reușesc să ajungă într-un sat de munte și sunt dați în grija sătenilor, care-i tratează cu neîncredere și-i păzesc cu arma în mân Romanul Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii povestește experiența din timpul celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial a unui grup de băieți orfani, evacuați din școala de corecție și rătăcind în căutarea unui adăpost. După trei săptămâni, ei reușesc să ajungă într-un sat de munte și sunt dați în grija sătenilor, care-i tratează cu neîncredere și-i păzesc cu arma în mână. Lucrurile se agravează odată cu izbucnirea unei molime: locuitorii intră în panică și părăsesc satul, izolându-l din exterior. Rămași singuri, băieții supraviețuiesc furând din proviziile lăsate în urmă de țărani și organizându-se precum adulții printre care au trăit. După întoarcerea localnicilor, viața li se complică însă, iar supraviețuirea nu li se mai pare ușoară, căci băieții vor fi sechestrați și amenințați cu moartea dacă nu păstrează secretul izolării lor.
"Romanul lui Oe este mai întunecat, mai plastic, mai înverșunat decât Împăratul muștelor; furia atroce e transformată de scriitorul japonez în arta literară, o pledoarie pentru toleranță mai impresionantă decât orice formă de vehemență." (Kirkus Reviews)
"Fiecare moment plăcut din roman – fiecare pas ce în aparență duce către eliberarea de suferință – este de fapt un pas către un viitor dureros. Sfârșitul vine furios și exploziv ca un uragan, căci boala și războiul pun stăpânire pe tinerele personaje ale lui Oe." (Publisher's Weekly)
"O alegorie a frumuseții: simplă, elegantă, cutremurătoare." (Chicago Tribune) ...more
Published June 2014 by Polirom (first published 1958)
芽むしり仔撃ち (Memushiri Kouchi)
To ask other readers questions about Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii, please sign up.
Be the first to ask a question about Stârpiți răul de la rădăcină, împușcați copiii
All LanguagesDeutsch (7) English (210) Español (43) Français (3) Nederlands (1) Română (7) Slovenščina (2) Ελληνικά (1) ไทย (2)
Oct 06, 2011 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)
Shelves: 1001-core, nobel, dystopian, ya
Lord of the Flies by William Golding came out in 1954. It was his first novel and he was 43 when it was first published. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe first came out in 1958. It was also his first novel and it came out when he was only 23 years old. Oe says that his major influences were Mark Twain, Selma Lagerlof and the French writer, Francois Rabelais. He did not mention that he had read and was inspired by Golding's work.
Both of these gentlemen were Nobel Prize for Literature Lord of the Flies by William Golding came out in 1954. It was his first novel and he was 43 when it was first published. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe first came out in 1958. It was also his first novel and it came out when he was only 23 years old. Oe says that his major influences were Mark Twain, Selma Lagerlof and the French writer, Francois Rabelais. He did not mention that he had read and was inspired by Golding's work.
Both of these gentlemen were Nobel Prize for Literature winners. During the award ceremonies, the Nobel committee read the rationale as part of bestowing the honor:
For Golding in 1983: "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today"
For Oe in 1994: "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
I am sure that anybody who read both novels would see a lot of similarities. British vs Japanese boys. The British boys in the jungle while the Japanese boys in a far-flung village. Both were left alone to fend for themselves. The British boys, who were some of the survivors of the sunken ship amidst nuclear war, tried to govern themselves and in the process failed due to their self-imposed rules which are founded on ignorance (innocence), selfishness and savagery. The Japanese boys, who were sent there as part of the reformatory program of the government during WWII, have external tormentors: the villagers who had to flee and leave them behind because of the onslaught of plague. When the adult rescuers found the British boys in the island, they saved them. When the adult villagers went back after the plague they scrambled to cover their acts by further tormenting the poor Japanese boys.
In my opinion, the Nobel committee members who wrote their award rationale were correct. Both of these novels reflect the human condition or predicament of today. Whether self-imposed or from external factor, we are all facing some forms of challenges, disillusionment and fear.
However, both novels are dark, bleak, pessimistic and sad. They don't provide any solution or even leave a streak of hope in the end. At least Golding presented a positive image of having the kids saved from the island. Oe has a bleaker ending with the boy narrator fleeing the village to an unknown destination. Although it is implied at the start of the novel that he survived, still the novel was outright dark and sad. I appreciate the honesty and the literary presentation of reality by these novels but I thought that it would have been better if these Nobel laureates left a clue on what to do to prevent these situations. Just a clue because I know that they were not social scientists who have all the exact solutions to many of our societal problems but just a hint so readers can deduce and build their conclusions on theirs.
This is my first book by Oe and I thought that I liked this better than the whimsical characters of Haruki Murakami or Banana Yoshimoto. It is darker than the love story of the upper class children in Book 1 of Yukio Mishima's The Sea of Fertility. However, this gives me the more realistic picture of the contemporary Japanese literature that was previously only populated by images that Murakami and Yoshimoto created like fishes falling from the sky, camera zooming in from nowhere to peek into your mind, man sitting inside a well for no clear reason at all, Johnny Walker killing many cats, a ghost appearing above the river, or a man who sleeps continuously for 1 week without even urinating that I really envy because I have a weak bladder and I urinate twice every night disturbing my sleep.
To further see the other sides, I should read a Kabawata and a Soseki soon.
Nov 09, 2013 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: literature, japan
You know how there are food deserts? Well, there are literary deserts, too, and Oklahoma has always seemed to wear the title like a badge of honor. It has been bad for as long as I can remember, but between amazon and e-books wreaking havoc in my absence, I returned home to Planet of the Apes, wherein the apes are James Patterson novels and I'm the guy on the ground screaming about bastards. On Thursday, I attempted to find a book. Just one. Something, anything I had the slightest bit of interes You know how there are food deserts? Well, there are literary deserts, too, and Oklahoma has always seemed to wear the title like a badge of honor. It has been bad for as long as I can remember, but between amazon and e-books wreaking havoc in my absence, I returned home to Planet of the Apes, wherein the apes are James Patterson novels and I'm the guy on the ground screaming about bastards. On Thursday, I attempted to find a book. Just one. Something, anything I had the slightest bit of interest in reading. I went to a regional chain and two hole in the walls, and came out with this, literally the only thing I picked up which piqued my interest. Historically, leaving a bookstore with nothing has been the opposite of my problem, but I'll be damned if I wasn't thrifty against my will this time. To top off the insult, the book ended up kinda sucking. That's a literary term, and I encourage college freshmen to use it in their essays.
So let's just start with the elephant in the room: yes, the translation is awful. Duly noted. How do I know this when I've neither seen the original Japanese text, nor could I read it even if I did? Because there is just no way this book is simultaneously this terrible and this tenacious. Having said that, there is also no way this book was ever mind-bendingly great. Seriously, you could spend thirty years in a bunker with the world's largest thesaurus, and it would matter approximately fuck-all when it comes to making this book an actually memorable experience. However, if you must attempt it, let me give you some pointers.
*There are other ways to say "so and so said" besides just "so and so said." Consider embracing synonyms.
*There are visuals to describe humans behaving in a mob fashion beyond the image of a "pack of dogs." Use it once? Sure. Just not a second time, and certainly not a third time.
*Please do something about the narrator's tendency to magically know what his entire troop is thinking in any given moment. Kindly slice or modify quotes illustrating mental interiors like "we thought in silence about the reformatory's one and only bicycle." Obviously, no one told you they were thinking about this random bicycle because you were all too busy thinking in silence. That leaves us with either a) you're purchasing your shades from Roddy Piper, or b) you're a Louisiana fairy princess telepath with the messiest sex life this side of Laura Palmer. And speaking of that...
*Dear god, the sex scene. Hand to my heart, it had to have been written, or at least translated, by a virgin male. Maybe both. Remember that time our hero waltzed into the shed that girl was in, lifted up her skirt, and just rammed it right in there without a word, kiss, or grope? First of all, no he didn't. That, or he did, but you left out the part where she started screaming in pain. Go gently, friend. Our ladybits have gatekeepers, and you're going to need to pay him at least a little something before you can cross. Even just a warning shout, a simple "Hey, so I'm going to place my penis inside of your vagina now if that's cool with you!" would be preferable to nothing at all unless you're looking to break something.
*Put a stop to the myriad of terrible similes. "It was dark in there, like a part of the forest abandoned by people." Hey, I can play that game!
-It was dark in there, like a dark chocolate cake on a black plate in an unlit room.
-It was dark in there, like the insides of my boots when my feet are in them.
-It was dark in there, like my house that one time we got waaaaay behind on the electric bill, and even though they sent us multiple cut-off warnings, we just didn't have the money so they eventually shut it off and it was really dark at nighttime in there because we didn't have very many candles, and the ones we did have were just those shitty tealight candles you use to heat up essential oils in little ceramic burners if you want your house to smell good, which, who even cares how it smells when you can't see shit anyway?
-It was dark in there, like the realm beyond a human anus.
Sorry, moving on.
*If you want to include a scrappy little fight scene in your novel, please don't describe it like so: "We fell on the paving stones and rolled around, kicking and scissoring..." Because, wow. Lost. In. Translation. Incidentally, this series of words could go a long way in dressing up that awful, nigh impossible sex scene.
*Maybe just let this one go, man. There are surely other books in need of translations, and they may even warrant them.
That's all I've got for now. I have a lot more little tabbies in the book that I could continue to harp on, but I'm getting old and feeble and I must take a rest for the time being. Read it if only to wonder at how a small-town wartime plague survival tale could actually manage to be this fucking boring. ...more
Aug 04, 2011 Mariel rated it liked it · review of another edition
Recommends it for: if I were king
Recommended to Mariel by: lion in a coma
The lost boys disease. Rabbits caught in the headlights and there will be no more tricks disease. Dogs humping legs fall right off disease. Roaches who might be indestructible for better or for worse disease. But who are the roaches (for better, or for worse)? The Japanese reform school boys or the contributing to my already bad image of hateful villagers types? Indestructible, anyway. (We could see who scurried away when the lights come back on.)
The book blurb lies. The boys don't try to build The lost boys disease. Rabbits caught in the headlights and there will be no more tricks disease. Dogs humping legs fall right off disease. Roaches who might be indestructible for better or for worse disease. But who are the roaches (for better, or for worse)? The Japanese reform school boys or the contributing to my already bad image of hateful villagers types? Indestructible, anyway. (We could see who scurried away when the lights come back on.)
The book blurb lies. The boys don't try to build lives while they are blockaded inside the village of the cats disease and rats disease and little girls gone mad beside their mama's dead body disease (it's called grief disease) and Korean slave boys disease (it's the disease of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time) and awol soldiers disease (at the wrong time and place). The warden will return (he makes the right time and place 'cause he's in charge). The warden is like "the man" in the certainty that they WILL be kept down. It's freedom if walking around a toxic waste dump without leg shackles is freedom. They are coming back in a minute with a bigger paddle between spankings freedom. Mariel, people who write back of book blurbs do not read the books they blurb.
I felt like Wendy in Peter Pan if she was mother of very dirty boys with filthy penises hanging out of their furry shorts all the day long. Or when my boy dogs start humping their chew toys and licking each others pee pees and butt holes during a brief respite of rowdy (sorta) play fighting. It's a weird feeling I have that if I ever had kids I'd have lots of filthy boys running around outside and they'd have fangs and sharp claws. The what it would be like to be a boy feeling is Wendy. They'd have slingshots, probably. It'd be a violent, never gonna grow up feeling. I don't feel like the adult in the weird feeling scenario (I was a dirty kid in Alabama making mud pies, collecting buckets of pissing toads, rattle snakes, nudity. What am I talking about? I was the girl version). Just sorta watching them with a perplexed look over all of the penis licking. These boys play with their penises a lot because they are there. That's probably why they did what they did to end up in reform school (one was a prostitute. Probably petty crime for the others). It was there and then they look up from the rough housing and find out they are in dirt that's never going to wash off. These boys wore lost boys outfits of raccoon disease and bear disease and squirrel disease. Touch it, get the disease. It's there. I'd be dying of the never going to grow up feeling before the disease did me off. The dirt that doesn't wash off. There will always be kids and there will always be adults that aren't really adults feeling. It's the waiting in the village. It's not a convincing illusion of freedom. They've been left with the diseases of the circle of life costumes because the adults are always adults and they are their vermin. It's not about a boy finding love (why are book jackets such liars? Why do they insist on missing the real feelings?!). It's a moment not to feel as dirty without ever feeling like there's going to be a tomorrow. Like if you've ever tried to distract yourself from something painful and remember the painful thing anyway. It's a weird feeling of dirt and animals playing roles if nature played its course to keep trying for those pitiful distractions. Does it play its course? The borrowed time (from whom? I feel the kid feeling that the time shouldn't belong to anyone. I guess that feeling is of unfairness).
There could be a goodreads drinking game for reviews of this book. Bitching about the translation? One drink. He wrote it when he was 23! Two drinks. A Lord of the Flies comparison take three drinks (every book about kids on their own is not Lord of the Flies! Dudes!). Mentioning that other reviewers complained about the bad translation, Lord of the Flies and that Oe was twenty three? Drink the rest of the bottle. If there was a drop left I'd say take another drink for assumptions based on Oe's biographical information (maybe but it's not necessary at all to say WWII or his home village).
You know what? The translation is not that bad. At first it's a little "What the fuck?" like watching an anime half way through a season and you don't know who is who (some animes are like that for all of the episodes). There are in-jokes, single and double entendres, sweaters and jackets and puns that were probably super hilarious in Japanese in this anime (okay, maybe just a whole lot of mentions of penises and assholes). With a little imagination you can stare too long and bend the words into different shapes. Sleep with one eye open and the other staring at the sun. I kinda grew to like the weird sentences. I like that I couldn't predict the next step in the word flow. I have no idea what Oe's sentences in Japanese looked like. My hand me down knowledge (I did once get a hand-me-down sweatshirt from one of the Gainesville murder victims. Yay charity. I was a morbid elementary school kid while wearing it) goes that he worked over his sentences deliberately to beat more meaning out of them. I read somewhere once (I think it was by one of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer writers) that to write snappy dialogue you should write what you want to say in plain speech before you find some clever way to twist it. Oe's translator (the much maligned Paul St. John. Hey, how come his co-translator Maki Sugiyama gets none of the blame?) wrote sentences that were twisted. But I kinda like getting a "WTF?" feeling sometimes. Just a little offbeat, a little something something not right about it. If you want to read a I-can't-believe-this-was-published translation, try this book.
The afternoon I bought Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids was a good one. I was rewarding myself with some new books (coughs babying myself) for some cry baby reason of my own (positive reinforcement probably sounds more mature). I sat on the floor of the bookstore and looked at different stuff that looked good. I came out good on the other side of my previous experience with Oe (Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness). And Japanese reform school kids! Didn't this just look like something for me? I was really happy to find it. Then I get home and look up my books on goodreads and it is review after review discouraging readers because of a bad translation. Sighs. If you want to read this book in English you can make it work. Don't let the naysayers get you down! You can catch a disease in the waiting room at the hospital Japanese kids story. There's more to get out of this than what someone else says it is. Book blurbs lie and no way is this Lord of the Flies.
The book could have done with a little more imagination, though. I've got some. Kids play make believe. Bodies aren't snatched when they they shoot up (and shoot, apparently). It's an us versus them thing, I guess. I get that it was set during a war and that had to turn that volume up all the way to eleven. Someone is versus someone else. (I like that the indians won in DBR cowboys versus indians films. That's what fantasies and inner lives are for.) I think the animal disease costumes represent too much. Juvenile deliquent, big mean villagers, guards, soldiers. All outfits. What you'll die for isn't the whole life if you don't actually die. They lacked ideas or wants. There was more to play with than just their penises. I'll get bird flu and fly away. But I hate waiting. Maybe the waiting would have killed me too. Deers don't like headlights either (or hunters). I don't know. Eventually the inevitability and unfairness makes you wish they'd stop scratching their penises and run wilder and less desperately. Like an animal. ...more
Oct 27, 2008 Alan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I'm giving 5 stars to the novel that I think this is. I've never read that novel. What I have read is the most bungled pile of cockney jabberwocky ever suffered to print--probably the single worst translation, of anything, that I have read, ever. It is so unbelievably bad. It reads like they crankshafted the Japanese through Google translator and shoveled the gibberish onto an ESL intern for remedial tidying. It is a complete embarrassment and Grove should be ashamed.
I used to think that it was I'm giving 5 stars to the novel that I think this is. I've never read that novel. What I have read is the most bungled pile of cockney jabberwocky ever suffered to print--probably the single worst translation, of anything, that I have read, ever. It is so unbelievably bad. It reads like they crankshafted the Japanese through Google translator and shoveled the gibberish onto an ESL intern for remedial tidying. It is a complete embarrassment and Grove should be ashamed.
I used to think that it was French that the English should never translate from. Now I am convinced that it is everything. English is no longer the English's language, especially not the English literary elite's, and they should at last stop trying to ramrod the wide English speaking world through the eyeballs with Cambridge's inept idea of Scouse, as though it had anything whatsoever to do with rural Japanese. ("Fagged out?" "Gaffer?") Especially when there isn't a copyeditor for a hundred miles and they can't--by force of sheer idiocy, and against a thousand-year tradition to the contrary--speak and write their own fucking language in the first place. We are talking about a graduate of Cambridge who is, on multiple occasions, unable to handle subject-verb agreement, basic comma usage, and which/that issues.
Also, nothing is ever "quietened down."
Also, what is a "pot-ato"?
Also, it is okay to call them icicles instead of "ice columns."
I'm serious.
Etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
On every single page the unbelievably harrowing, clockwork gorgeousness of the book is straight-jacketed by utterly unnatural dialog--including but not limited to: "'You lot!'" and "'Don't fool with us!'"
Nietzsche said that it is neither the best nor the worst of a work that is ruined in translation--which leaves a fucking fuck of a lot between for ruining, all of which in this case is completely besotted by the ambitions of these excruciating morons.
From Moron A's--Paul St. John Mackintosh's--blog:
"Occupation: Financial Journalist
Vocation: Poet and Imaginative writer."
Nov 01, 2009 Kasia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Recommends it for: not for the faint of heart
Shelves: 1001-done-with, war, east-asia, nobel-laureates, lovely-covers, favorites
It's a little crazy - the title of this book, don't you think? A little nuts. Asking me to shoot the kids! The kids!!! You run around with an axe, bury it left and right in brain matter, why don't you. And while you're at it, ruin my flowers. Nutz!!! Say, what? The kids are like the buds? It's wrong? Nonsense. You're overusing that pretty head of yours. Remember Golding? The guy had a point!!! Nothing like the buds!! Shoot them. Shoot them all!!!
OK. Time out. Lets put the juvenile and the split It's a little crazy - the title of this book, don't you think? A little nuts. Asking me to shoot the kids! The kids!!! You run around with an axe, bury it left and right in brain matter, why don't you. And while you're at it, ruin my flowers. Nutz!!! Say, what? The kids are like the buds? It's wrong? Nonsense. You're overusing that pretty head of yours. Remember Golding? The guy had a point!!! Nothing like the buds!! Shoot them. Shoot them all!!!
OK. Time out. Lets put the juvenile and the split personality to rest, you probably want to know whether the book was any good.
Well it was bloody awesome! Violent from start to finish, with chapter titles way too revealing, and male genitals shrinking in the cold time after time over and over - stuff like that makes me cringe, stuff like that can cross prominent authors off my reading list for good, stuff like that done right apparently can earn you a Nobel Prize but my aproval? You have to try harder, and spartan sentences and male first person narrative aren't helping either. So what is it about this book that made it so appealing to me after all? Maybe it's the setting: Japan during WWII, isolated snow buried little village. Maybe it's the disease - ever since the Plague, I have the unhealthy fascination with sickness and love when my characters suffer even die. Maybe it's true an honest, spot on portrayal of kids and adults, boys and girl, foreigners and locals, the educated and the stupid mob. Maybe it's all of it, together with the despised brutality and raw emotions. But whatever it is, it makes the book damn good.
And two more things before you go. One, judging from reviews here on GR, English translation leaves a lot to be desired. I read it in Polish and voice no complaints, my translation was fine, sorry if you get a shitty one. Two, all of the Lord of the Flies references - they don't give this book justice. Nip the buds, shoot the kids is not a LOTF-repeat with a different setting and Japanese customs thrown in for distraction. What the two books have in common is young boys in isolation and a level of violence which you usually don't associate with kids, but that's it. The message Oë passes on with his book (and he passes it well) is the opposite of what Golding tried to convey. So it is fun to make a literary comparison between those two, but it's fun not because of the similarities, but because of the differences: both books disagree on the most essential matter, both deliver strong arguments and make a stance. So before you think of Kenzaburo Oë as a William Golding wannabe, think twice, the guy deserves his own moment in the spotlight.
Aug 13, 2013 Bettie rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: fraudio, summer-2013, published-1958, nobel-laureate, translation, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, plague-disease, slit-yer-wrists-gloomy, ouch, next
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. (view spoiler)[Bettie's Books (hide spoiler)]
Apr 10, 2018 Andy Weston rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Though the translation contains errors, as many reviewers point out, Oe's story is a powerful one and one that will not easily be forgotten. Towards the end of the Second World War it is necessary to evacuate a small Reformatory School from the city to the mountains, a small group of 15 adolescent boys and there Warden. Shortly after arriving at their destination in a small rural village one of the boys becomes ill, and the villagers and Warden assume it is a plague, and abandon the boys.
It is Though the translation contains errors, as many reviewers point out, Oe's story is a powerful one and one that will not easily be forgotten. Towards the end of the Second World War it is necessary to evacuate a small Reformatory School from the city to the mountains, a small group of 15 adolescent boys and there Warden. Shortly after arriving at their destination in a small rural village one of the boys becomes ill, and the villagers and Warden assume it is a plague, and abandon the boys.
It is compared to Lord of the Flies which was published only 3 years earlier, but this is am older group of boys, all wrong-doers (though the only crime that is revealed is that of the unnamed narrator), and the groups experiences are more brutal and gruesome. Rather, if anything deeper is to be read into this, it is an indictment of war-time cruelty and a consideration of fear in society and place of outsiders. I found it fascinating, and though the translation may have some errors, it certainly does not deteriorate from appreciating the quality of the writing.
The particular village Oe chooses has a wonderfully imagined location in the mountains. The boys board a type of funicular train to get to their new home, and then must cross a precarious gorge. The image found from an art student online, is pretty much how I pictured it.
This was Oe's first novel, and he is regarded as a great of Japanese post-war literature, and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1994. I am certainly keen to read more from him. ...more
Oct 06, 2017 Bbrown rated it liked it · review of another edition
Oe wrote Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids when he was only 23, and, while that is impressive on its own, the book's amateur nature unfortunately shows.
The basic story is that, concurrent with World War II, a group of what are essentially Japanese juvenile delinquents is evacuated to a rural village, and the villagers are none too pleased to have them. The comparison that I have seen most frequently made is to Lord of the Flies, but I think the similarities are largely only surface level, stemming f Oe wrote Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids when he was only 23, and, while that is impressive on its own, the book's amateur nature unfortunately shows.
The basic story is that, concurrent with World War II, a group of what are essentially Japanese juvenile delinquents is evacuated to a rural village, and the villagers are none too pleased to have them. The comparison that I have seen most frequently made is to Lord of the Flies, but I think the similarities are largely only surface level, stemming from the little over a third of the book where the delinquents are abandoned during a plague outbreak. The go-to comparison for a bunch of kids left on their own is Lord of the Flies, but this is not a story of children trying to form a society that fails because of the children's inherent nature, instead it's the cruelty of the adult villagers that most drives the darkness of Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids.
Any book completed by a 23 year old is impressive to a degree, but, as previously mentioned, this is an amateurish work. The most prominent example of this work being a beginner's effort from Oe is that at times he assumes that readers have an understanding of the book's subject matter and so does not provide information. After having finished the book, I still have no clear grasp of the ages of the main characters. The narrator at times seems like he is eleven, other times like he is seventeen, and that's far too large of a range. Relatedly, Oe is oftentimes stingy on providing character motivations and buildup to important actions, for instance when the narrator tries to hide the outbreak of plague and gets into a fight with a stranger over a bag of rice. You can cobble together logical reasons for the characters' actions, but Oe doesn't set them forth clearly. There are other problems as well, with some lines not making much sense (smacking of Oe or his translator trying too hard), and also the book abruptly ends with no resolution.
This was the first book I read by Oe, and it may not have been the best place to start. Not only did he write it very early in his career, but I also understand it to be an outlier compared to most of his other works, as it is not autobiographical to some degree. This one is a slightly sub-par effort, and it does not lead me to expect greatness from Oe's other books, but I should read one of his more famous later works before passing judgment. 2.5 stars, rounding up. ...more
Jun 26, 2019 Kamila Kunda rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: asia, fiction, japan
"Nip the Buds, Kill the Kids" was the first novel Kenzaburō Ōe ever wrote, in 1958, at the age of only twenty three. As a young man Ōe was fascinated by French literature, studied it at the university, and this story is clearly influenced by French existentialism, particularly by the writings by Albert Camus, as well as by Spanish picaresque literature.
The story, set at the end of World War II, is about a group of young boys from a reformatory, sent to a remote village in a mountainous area and "Nip the Buds, Kill the Kids" was the first novel Kenzaburō Ōe ever wrote, in 1958, at the age of only twenty three. As a young man Ōe was fascinated by French literature, studied it at the university, and this story is clearly influenced by French existentialism, particularly by the writings by Albert Camus, as well as by Spanish picaresque literature.
The story, set at the end of World War II, is about a group of young boys from a reformatory, sent to a remote village in a mountainous area and located in a densely wooded valley to live and work. Soon after their arrival the boys discover that the villagers, always hostile and brutal towards them, suspect the village is afflicted by plague. One night they all flee in secret, abandoning the boys and cutting off their way out from the village. The boys need to come to terms with their uncertain fate and find a way to survive.
With this novel Ōe's fascination with moral dilemmas, the plight of an outcast, group dynamics and peer pressure began. Japanese post-war literature often depicted anti-heroes, disillusioned about humanity. Here we have children, still innocent, still sensitive, easily humiliated by unfairness and injustice, which becomes clear when they meet a Korean boy left behind and find a war deserter, whose hateful villagers have wanted to kill. Ōe emphasises filthy conditions, in which the boys have to live, the stench of rotting corpses of humans and animals, the suffering. Despite being dark the novel is also lyrical and emotionally gut-wrenching and the impact is akin to this that "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy leaves.
Ōe has always spoken of his unease when it came to the Japanese role in the war, the rampage with which Japan invaded other Asian countries and the ruthlessness of the Japanese during the war. He talked about it beautifully in his acceptance speech when awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (the whole speech is superb and I encourage you to read it). "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" will remain one the classics of anti-war literature, not losing its profound impact even after so many years after the publication. ...more
Jul 10, 2011 Judy rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: 20th-century-fiction, books-from-1958, literature-in-translation
Kenzaburo Oe won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. This is his first novel, published when he was 23. It is based on his experiences as a child growing up on a remote Japanese island during World War II. When I read the book last November, I was going through a period of reading about WWII from the Japanese point of view, for which I was glad. It opened my eyes and mind, helping me to shake off some of my high school history teachings.
The kids in this story are from a reform school and hav
The kids in this story are from a reform school and have been transported to a small village set in a mountainous region. It is winter, they are cold, not well fed, and routinely roughed up. Because there have been a couple instances of plague in the village, the villagers evacuate and disappear, leaving the boys trapped there with no hope of escape. One boy is determined to find a way out.
Surprisingly, to a certain degree, the boys rise up out of their feral state and begin to come together as a community, though at first they are dismayed and directionless without orders from adults. Sadly, in the end they are doomed. The main character, the one who tried to find an escape, is the only one who just barely benefited from his brief brush with freedom.
It is a harrowing story on a level with Lord of the Flies and J G Ballard's Empire of the Sun. The writing is excellent and I liked the book. ...more
Mar 19, 2014 Andrew added it · review of another edition
Shelves: kenzaburo-oe, japanese-fiction
Kenzaburo Oe is a writer who always leads me to cinematic analogies-- David Lynch and Takashi Miike, primarily-- so I'm gonna make another.
What if you took the ragtag boys of The 400 Blows, and transferred them to the ruins of 1940s Japan? What if you added enough desperate gay sex in hovels to make Jean Genet blush, occupying soldiers, prison slave labor, fascist remnants, girls with their mothers' corpses, down-and-out Koreans trapped in Japan, and descriptions of flaccid penises?
You'd have Ni Kenzaburo Oe is a writer who always leads me to cinematic analogies-- David Lynch and Takashi Miike, primarily-- so I'm gonna make another.
You'd have Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, Oe-san's first novel, which was just as weird and chaotic as I'd hoped.
Aug 08, 2018 David Ioan rated it really liked it
Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, japanese-literature
An honest 4.5 star rating.
May 15, 2016 Paul Fulcher rated it liked it · review of another edition
"That Man should Labour & sorrow, & learn & forget, & return
To the dark valley whence he came, to begin his labour anew."
William Blake, Vala, or the Four Zoas, Night the Eighth (quoted in the translators' introduction)
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids was Kenzaburo Oe's debut novel in 1958. It differs significantly from his later, more complex and self-referential work, but is a striking story in it's own right.
The novel has an allegorical feel, with no specifics of time or place, eve "That Man should Labour & sorrow, & learn & forget, & return
The novel has an allegorical feel, with no specifics of time or place, even lacking proper names for the characters.
It is set during a time of an unspecified war.
"It was a time of killing. Like a long deluge, the war sent its mass insanity flooding into the convolutions of people's feelings, into every last recess of their bodies, into the forest, the streets, into the sky...
In that time, when maddened adults ran riot in the streets, it is enough to record that there was a strange mania for locking up those with skin that was smooth all over, or with just a little glowing chestnut down: those who had committed petty offences; including those simply judged to have criminal tendencies"
The narrator is one of a number of juveniles delinquents in a reformatory. "With the air raids intensifying" some are reclaimed by their families, "but the majority never came forward to pick up their bad, troublesome offspring", and the narrator's father, far from retrieving him, instead drops off his younger brother "taking advantage of the reformatory's mass evacuation" of the residual inmates to a place of safety.
The novel commences during their journey, as the wardens try to find a country village that will take them, but they encounter suspicion or outright hostility from the locals. They eventually find a home of sorts in a remote village in a valley surrounded by a forest, a setting clearly based on Oe's own Shikoku home village, and which was to become a signature feature in his works.
"Surrounded by the silent villagers clutching their weapons, we went down the narrow sloping path into the damp dark forest. The sound of frozen bark crackling deep in the forest, the rustling of small beasts' stealthy flight, the shrill cries and sudden wingbeats of birds assaulted us and often made us cringe in alarm. The night forest was like a quietly raging sea. The villagers hemmed us in, front and back, as if we were prisoners of war, though there was no need. Not even our most reckless boys had the courage to dash into that vast forest which raged and grew calm like a sea. After passing through the forest, the road stretched away in the pallid darkness, spread with small stones rounded by rain and wind that felt pleasant underfoot, making the decent easier. Then, further of, spread out along a narrow curved valley, there was a small village."
The villagers, while providing accommodation, are still far from welcoming. "Always remember that in this village you are only useless vermin" says the Village Headman, providing meagre rations, locking them in their dormitory at night, and setting them to work.
But their first job proves to be their last. They are required to bury animals that have died from a mysterious disease, and when one of the boys dies (albeit he was ill on arrival), the villagers, fearing the plague has spread to humans, flee, taking their surviving livestock with them, leaving the boys alone.
"At dawn the village was deathly still: no cocks crowed and no domestic animals bayed. Morning sun soft and white as powder bathed the inert, debilitated houses, the trees, the lanes and the deep hollow of the valley enfolding them all. It bathed the village like clear water and cast no shadows at the feet of us abandoned boys as we walked slowly along the road, going up and down the slope...
We were a little overwhelmed by the village entirely without villagers, the hollow cast-off hulk of the village, and grew uneasy about the role we had fallen into, like the times when we had performed at school functions. The violent excitement of when we learned of the villagers' exodus and the first hour afterwards was already diluted ... And without a supervisor we didn't know what to do."
This provides the potential set-up for a Lord of the Flies type story.
"I don't intend to justify what we started late that afternoon. None of us decided on it or passed judgement on it. Although abnormal it began quite normally."
But in reality, their "abnormal" behaviour is rather tame (particularly for children already labelled by society as delinquents) and boredom seems the main feeling that their situation arouses:
"We were galled by the stubborn procrastination of time and the silence blanketing the valley, and we began to grow tired. And we were expecting something. Anything which restored our integrity and tension would have been welcome, even the return of the villagers. We had broken into and robbed their houses and occupied their living quarters, but already we no longer knew whether or not we hated those who had abandoned us."
The language of the novel is far more visceral and direct than that of Oe's later works:
"Our lethargy and despair, the swarming germs, the gigantic host of minute germs that were going to drive us into unconsciousness, into fits of gibberish that would burn out throats like fire, were seething like pale yellow gelatin boiled down from cattle bones and hide, swamping the liquefied village."
When the villagers eventually return, they tell the narrator "Someone like you should be throttled while they're still a kid. We squash vermin while they are still small. We're peasants: we nip the bad buds early."
And the novel ends with the narrator fleeing like a hunted animal:
"But I didn't know what to do to get away through the night forest, fleeing from the brutal villagers, and escape harm. I didn't even know if I still had the strength to run any more. I was only a child, tired, insanely angry, tearful, shivering with cold and hunger."
The English edition of Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids comes with an illuminating introduction from the translators Paul St John Mackintosh and Maki Sugiyama. Oe rather suffers in English from a bewildering variety of translators, in part due to the flurry of his works brought out post his 1994 Nobel win (this was published in English in 1995), but this pair seem to have done a good job. ...more
Mar 30, 2016 Matt Herman rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: books-of-2016
A book that truly shows that whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. Until the ending really wraps the story together, this story just didn't have the draw to it that I expected something with so much critical renown to carry. However, at the conclusion of the last couple of pages, I think that the virtues of this story showed through a lot more clearly. Overall, this story was quite good but just not quite my cup of tea. It really does feel like a well written book.... buuuut...
The trans A book that truly shows that whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. Until the ending really wraps the story together, this story just didn't have the draw to it that I expected something with so much critical renown to carry. However, at the conclusion of the last couple of pages, I think that the virtues of this story showed through a lot more clearly. Overall, this story was quite good but just not quite my cup of tea. It really does feel like a well written book.... buuuut...
The translation of this version ranges from janky to hilariously poor. I can only wonder what the book would read like without the baggage from a mediocre translation. I'm not alone in feeling this way, and I do wonder why a book that should be given special treatment is able to have mistakes like "keep-ing" kept (ha) in. Some of the word choices are nearly inexplicable- I could find a better suited word without actually even seeing the source material. It's really a shame.
The book shows (very well) that life isn't fair, and the translation job is proof ...more
May 09, 2014 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: japan, nobel-prize, war
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids was Kenzaburo Oe's debut novel. First published when he was only 23, it draws on his experiences as a child during World War II. Some aspects of the plot - a group of boys abandoned during a war & left to look after themselves - invite comparisons to Lord of the Flies, but the similarities are merely superficial. I found Buds to be far more complex, nuanced and adult - an interesting, compelling, and sometimes difficult read. I read the English translation, which Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids was Kenzaburo Oe's debut novel. First published when he was only 23, it draws on his experiences as a child during World War II. Some aspects of the plot - a group of boys abandoned during a war & left to look after themselves - invite comparisons to Lord of the Flies, but the similarities are merely superficial. I found Buds to be far more complex, nuanced and adult - an interesting, compelling, and sometimes difficult read. I read the English translation, which is apparently not great. I must have read a different/more modern translation than the one mentioned in many of the reviews here, because many of the problems mentioned weren't present in the translation I read. The dialog was a bit stiff at times, but did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. I'm really interested to read more of Oe's work. ...more
Oct 27, 2009 Roof Beam Reader (Adam) rated it really liked it · review of another edition
https://roofbeamreader.com/2010/09/19...
May 02, 2012 Jaclyn Michelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition
http://wineandabook.com/2012/07/18/re...
"Nonetheless, for aliens like captured wild beasts to be safe before others watching them, it is best to lead the will-less, eyeless existence of a stone, flower or tree: a purely observed existence. My brother, since, he persisted in being the eye that watched the villagers, was struck on his cheeks by thick yellowish gobs of spittle rolled on women's tongues, and stones thrown by the children. But, smiling, he would wipe his cheeks with his large bird-em http://wineandabook.com/2012/07/18/re...
"Nonetheless, for aliens like captured wild beasts to be safe before others watching them, it is best to lead the will-less, eyeless existence of a stone, flower or tree: a purely observed existence. My brother, since, he persisted in being the eye that watched the villagers, was struck on his cheeks by thick yellowish gobs of spittle rolled on women's tongues, and stones thrown by the children. But, smiling, he would wipe his cheeks with his large bird-embroidered pocket facecloth and go on staring in wonderment at the villagers who had insulted him." (p. 23)
Clocking in at 189 pages, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids may at first glance seem like a quick read, but due to Oe's mastery of economy of language, this book is far fuller than one might expect.
Premise: Set during WWII, a group of teenage boys from a reformatory are marched through the woods (presumably on the remote island of Shikoku, Japan, since that's where the author spent most of his life...but no specific geographic location is ever named) and evacuated to a rural village. Upon their arrival, they're made to bury piles of corpses of rotting animals, infected with the plague. The villagers soon flee and abandon the boys in the plague-infested village, where they are left to their own devices to determine a means of survival.
There's a lot going on in such a petite volume: there's the relationship between the narrator and his younger brother, between the narrator and the rest of the group of boys, between the narrator and his love interest; the juxtaposition of order and chaos; the dividing line between childhood and adulthood; the notion of the "other"; themes of abandonment and responsibility to self v. responsibility to the community v. responsibility to family...and Oe was only 23 when this book was published.
Warning: There's also a lot of penis-related discussion. I get that it's a story about adolescent boys, but I swear once a chapter the narrator is either mentioning his erection, talking about someone else's erection, peeing in the snow, etc. It's a lot. I understand it's purpose (perpetuating this undercurrent of rushed sexuality that invades the narrative from time to time) and it's a bit unsettling considering the age of the characters. But I can appreciate why Oe made the choice to include such details in terms of character development/establishment...and I like it when something I read makes me FEEL something, even if the feeling isn't necessarily pleasant.
Penis talk aside, I really valued the experience of reading this book. It was unlike anything I had read before. Dark and unsettling, thought-provoking, at times spare, and at times rich...I could picture the action and characters so vividly as I read. Oe does an amazing job of establishing tone in his work. The entire piece just worked. I will definitely search out more of Oe's translated works in the future.
Rubric rating: 7.5. I can absolutely appreciate why Oe was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. ...more
Sep 29, 2016 Ean rated it liked it · review of another edition
Personal response:
This book is nothing compared to what it's like now than it was back then. I would give this book personally a three because of how it starts. The main kid out of the 15 is the best because of his intelligence and skills to build and problem solve.
Plot Summary:
This book Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids starts out with one boy who is seeing harm in his village. Such as how the village is going down in animal population because they have been overtaken by soldiers. The boy gets mov Personal response:
This book Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids starts out with one boy who is seeing harm in his village. Such as how the village is going down in animal population because they have been overtaken by soldiers. The boy gets moved to a different village where he finds his brother. His brother has an idea to get along with the black smith. Since the animals up in the mountains are dying, so the soldiers will too. They get 13 kids into helping them so this job can happen. The kids needed weapons for the journey to protect themselves. They asked the blacksmith if they can do something for him. Blacksmith used the kids to clean up dead animal bodies. They went to Jack, the blacksmith, after the kids cleaned up the dead animals. Jack then gave the weapons to the kids. Read the rest to find out what happens next.
The boy that the soldiers describe was a skinny but bulky kid that was on a mission. He didn't want to be stopped no matter what. He has brown hair, hazel eyes, and is always covered in dirt like he got in a fight.
The soldiers describe his brother with black hair, blue eyes, doesn't talk much unless is asked to, very strong even though he is younger than his brother. He wore a ripped up shirt everywhere he went too.
I would recommended this book to lots of people that are looking for adventure in their books. Also to keep up with all the back and forth in the book, the age limit should be 12 and up. Personally, I would like to give this book a 4.5 because of how lost I got in the beginning. I got out of that later on, and it was worth to keep reading. ...more
Aug 06, 2014 Michael Mahin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: world-literature, existentialism, literary-fiction, nobel-prize-winners, classics
Long before winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994, Oe was studying French Literature at Tokyo University, where he did his graduate thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre. It's no surprise then that many of Oe's works deal with various forms of existential crisis. Nip the Buds, which is an exploration of innocence confronting the tragic realities of experience, fits this profile.
Nip the Buds if often described as a Japanese Lord of the Flies. In it, 15 unloved and unwanted reformatory boys are "qua Long before winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994, Oe was studying French Literature at Tokyo University, where he did his graduate thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre. It's no surprise then that many of Oe's works deal with various forms of existential crisis. Nip the Buds, which is an exploration of innocence confronting the tragic realities of experience, fits this profile.
Nip the Buds if often described as a Japanese Lord of the Flies. In it, 15 unloved and unwanted reformatory boys are "quarantined" by local villagers when a plague breaks out. Left to fend for themselves, the boys search for meaning in the face of death and beneath the shadow of war. Like the Lord of the Flies, Nip the Bud's themes reflect modern anxieties over the tragic complexities of war as experienced by the young.
Written in 1958, Nip the Buds also reflects Japanese cultural anxieties about finding meaning in a post-WWII, post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki, post-emperor world. The story itself is written in a straighforward, first person narration. As with Lord of the Flies, major themes include war, death, justice vs moral good, the loss of innocence, friendship, love, cowardice, class, and survival.
If you're a lover of world literature, existentialism, philosophical books like Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, or dark coming of age stories like Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, and A Separate Peace, you'll love Nip the Buds. I did. ...more
Jul 28, 2009 Stephen Durrant rated it liked it · review of another edition
Oe's first novel (1958), written when he was only twenty-three, is sometimes compared to Golding's Lord of the Flies. The resemblance is that both books deal with boys who are isolated and forced upon their own resources. Here the resemblance ends. The boys in Nip the Buds are delinquents who constitute a sort of roving work force in the Japanese countryside during an unnamed war. They wake up one morning to find that the inhabitants of the village in which they are lodged have left in fear of t Oe's first novel (1958), written when he was only twenty-three, is sometimes compared to Golding's Lord of the Flies. The resemblance is that both books deal with boys who are isolated and forced upon their own resources. Here the resemblance ends. The boys in Nip the Buds are delinquents who constitute a sort of roving work force in the Japanese countryside during an unnamed war. They wake up one morning to find that the inhabitants of the village in which they are lodged have left in fear of the plague. Alone, the young "outsiders" move into the villagers' homes. Slowly they even begin to build "civilization:" they gather together to cook, they bury the dead, and come to accept a Korean outsider and then a Japanese deserter into their nascent society. One of them even discovers love. But it all comes unraveled when the farmers who had deserted the village just as suddenly return and bring with them prejudice and cruelty. Oe seems to be saying here that these delinquents are the victims of rejection and cruelty, and that they are often capable of greater tolerance and emotional sensitivity than the healthy members of society who judge and then persecute them. While I like this book, it does seem less ambitious and complex than most of Oe's later works. ...more
Dec 18, 2010 Thando rated it really liked it · review of another edition
"Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" is the first novel written by Kenzaburo Oe at the young age of 23 (but then again you probably already knew this).
The novel is a harsh insight into the world of World War 2 Japan, and provides a deeply introspective satire and criticism of this Japan.
The stories protagonist an unnamed early adolescent boy is the engine of the story, propelling it forward through beautiful descriptions and anecdotes on japan at the time. A reformatory boy, being evacuated to the mou "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" is the first novel written by Kenzaburo Oe at the young age of 23 (but then again you probably already knew this).
The stories protagonist an unnamed early adolescent boy is the engine of the story, propelling it forward through beautiful descriptions and anecdotes on japan at the time. A reformatory boy, being evacuated to the mountains along with his young brother and the rest of the fifteen strong group - he presents a moving and disturbing depiction of WW2 and japanese society.
Japan has become blind and cruel, even children are treated as "vermin" in a country struggling to survive in a time of war. The isolated villagers (where Oe himself grew up) are characterized as vulgar, brutish and callous figures out for themselves.
Often described as a Japanese "Lord of the Flies"; the book is a stunning commentary on WW2 Japan that provides the reader with a stark understanding of the fearful mind, and the beastly nature of war.
A must read in a world where wars rage on endlessly... ...more
Sep 25, 2016 Ed Lehman rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: completed-1001-list-book, 1001-list, asia
Having recently read William Golding's Lord of the Flies, it was easy to see the similarities with this tale: a group of boys forced to form their own society in order to survive. But whereas in the Lord of the Flies, the boys are marooned by an accident, these boys are deliberately abandoned by adults. The story takes place during war-time Japan and a group of reformatory boys are being evacuated to a mountain village.... only the village is being hit by a plaque killing animals and people alik Having recently read William Golding's Lord of the Flies, it was easy to see the similarities with this tale: a group of boys forced to form their own society in order to survive. But whereas in the Lord of the Flies, the boys are marooned by an accident, these boys are deliberately abandoned by adults. The story takes place during war-time Japan and a group of reformatory boys are being evacuated to a mountain village.... only the village is being hit by a plaque killing animals and people alike. The villagers eventually escape...and force the boys to remain by themselves. When the villagers return, the boys are again victimized. The novel is clearly a challenge to Japan's authoritarian tradition and the morality of the ruling class. Very well written and gripping. ...more
Dec 08, 2018 Shabneez rated it it was ok · review of another edition
I don't like books that focus too much on the sexual activities of their characters and I felt this book did. I don't care about how many soldiers Minami wants to sleep with and the countless repetition bored me to death.
Also, the narrator's own experiences with the 'little girl'. She is always referred to as 'the little girl'. Jst how old was she? Was she even of age, was there even consent? I'm horrified. I didn't like this book.
Okay my review is focusing on details that aren't even what the I don't like books that focus too much on the sexual activities of their characters and I felt this book did. I don't care about how many soldiers Minami wants to sleep with and the countless repetition bored me to death.
Okay my review is focusing on details that aren't even what the story is about but these little details really put me off. So that's that. ...more
Jan 19, 2018 Ana rated it really liked it · review of another edition
I enjoyed this book. The storyline and concept was very chaotic, and the author purposely underdeveloped many of the characters to contrast them with the more complex main characters. This novel was a little too graphic for me, although I suppose that was realistic
Feb 27, 2012 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: big-red-circle
Has Kenzaburo Oe ever visited Japan? Ban this filth! It's nuts. I love it! Was Kenzaburo Oe ever a boy? A mountain with a personality disorder might have written this.
Jan 02, 2009 AJ LeBlanc rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: cbr-iv, historical-fiction
Four stars is "really liked it". I didn't really like this book, but it is a four star book, so here we go.
Have you ever read a book or watched a movie that you knew wasn't going to end well, but for some reason you stuck with it? You had a sinking feeling in your stomach that slowly hardened into a rock and just sat there, pressing down, letting you know that things were not going to be OK at the end. Bad things were coming. You know it, but you're going to stand here and watch.
That's this enti Four stars is "really liked it". I didn't really like this book, but it is a four star book, so here we go.
That's this entire book.
As soon as I started reading I kept asking myself "Are you sure you want to do this?" For some reason I decided that yes, I did want to keep reading. I prepared myself to be shocked, sad and depressed. I knew before I even finished the introduction to the author and his writings that this was going to be one of those books that you can't shrug off and walk away from and it was going to leave me physically affected. I was going to be twitching off the sensation of not wanting to remember. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien did this to me. I kept wondering why I was reading the book and I had a sick feeling in my stomach, but the book felt important and I felt like I should know what happened, and that's why I kept reading Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids.
I haven't even gotten to the part where I talk about the book and my face is already twisted into a grimace of not wanting to think about this anymore.
I read the Goodreads summary and thought Lord of the Flies. I can handle this. I read Lord of the Flies. Once. In high school. I don't remember being freaked the fuck out by it. I'm debating picking it up now to see if it will wash away the sadness of Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by not being as horrible.
I don't even know how to review this book. There are semi-spoilers, but not specifics.
Basically if there's anything in the book that you like, don't. It's going die, or be killed, or get ruined, or go away. There is no lasting happiness in this book. A small event would happen that would be nice and a character would be happy and I would be destroyed because I knew something horrible was on the way. The youngest, sweetest boy finds and falls in love with a dog. Yep. We all know what's going to happen there. A girl is left behind in the village with the boys. Yep. Although I was pleased that she didn't get raped to death, so there's a bonus. The boys have a small victory by finding food and having a festival? Yeah, that happiness will be done by the time the sun comes up.
The most painful and beautiful thing about this book is the love the nameless main character has for his little brother. The narrator is older than most of the boys and is one of two unofficial leaders. Minami is the other, and he is quickly revealed to be calculating and quick. He doesn't care for much other than survival and while he has moments of kindness and fun, you know he'll drop it in a second if he thinks he can profit from cruelty With the narrator, you get the sense that he is cold and you know that he has committed crimes because he is part of the reformatory school, yet he doesn't come across as being as hard as Minami. We see him cradle his little brother when he sleeps and tries to protect him from being cold and scared. His brother is able to keep a piece of innocence even though he is surrounded by war and violence and the criminal boys. The younger brother is not part of these boys. When his father found out that they were being evacuated, he dropped the boy off, figuring he would be better provided for. He is excited and enthralled by their tales, seeing them as daring creatures and not understanding the danger.
When the plague hits and the boys are left behind, Goodreads lies. "Their brief attempt to build autonomous lives of self-respect, love, and tribal valor" doesn't happen. They realize they are alone, they are pissed, and they break into all the houses to wreck things in their anger. They don't put anyone in charge, although they do listen to the narrator when he tries to organize things. They eat and wander around and are bored. There is no plan to create some sort of society. They just kick around and wonder if the adults will come back.
I wonder what would happen if the adults hadn't come back. A Korean boy who was also left behind joins the group and teaches them how to hunt for birds and there was some food left behind, but there are no long term plans. When people start to get sick, the boys panic. Minami quickly moves into survival mode and will do anything to protect himself. He works to gain the support from other boys, although I'm sure he'd easily knock them aside if he needed to. If the narrator didn't have his brother, he'd probably be the same way. Minami is a great mirror character for him and I'm curious what this book would be if it was told from Minami's point of view.
In the end, the adults do come back. And of course they bring their power and their rules to these boys that they detest and were forced to take in. They crush any semblance of independence they have created and the boys are immediately placed back into their powerless, outsider roles.
This brings us to the central question of this book: What would you do for the greater good? For Minami, it's about survival. Will he stay independent if he thinks it will lead to escape and freedom, or will he stay put knowing he has a sense of power over the other boys? Will the narrator fight for himself and his brother? If you know that you will be defeated, is it better to fight and be knocked down, or to be silent and safe? The villagers have no connection to these boys at all. They could easily kill all of them, although they do fear the government and they soldiers who will return to check on them, but will they kill a boy or two if it means protecting their own families and friends?
Part of me wishes I hadn't read this because it's so horrible, but at the same time I'm glad I did because it is so powerful. Having the story told through the boys gives it this sense of innocence even though they are anything but. There are a lot of penises getting waved around. But they are boys and this makes them powerless when adults are around. But the adults are powerless when the soldiers are around. And the soldiers are powerless when there is war. People latch onto whatever is going to give them comfort or a sense of control, even if it means others are killed. Will people protect a group, or will they kill everything if it means they individually get to live?
Having the introduction to Ōe, his life, and his writing was incredibly helpful. I didn't know anything about him, and reading this made me understand the story. I think that's the reason why I stuck with it and didn't immediately return it to the library when I realized how ugly it was going to be. It was truth, it was his truth and I felt by reading it, I was honoring it.
I don't know who I would recommend this book to. In a way, I don't want people to read it because it's so harsh, but at the same time, it should be read. Just don't pick it up if you're feeling emotionally fragile. ...more
May 02, 2018 Dave Morris rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Memushiri kouchi is often compared to Lord of the Flies, and Oe must have been aware of Golding's work, published four years earlier. But the comparison is superficial. Golding's style is lush, elegant, "British storyteller" in tone, and he's interested in the children as a group of individuals and political animals. Oe's story is less leisurely, and told primarily as the narrator's inner journey. I'm going to call it dreamlike, but not in a drifty, serene sense; I mean dreamlike in the way a Ma Memushiri kouchi is often compared to Lord of the Flies, and Oe must have been aware of Golding's work, published four years earlier. But the comparison is superficial. Golding's style is lush, elegant, "British storyteller" in tone, and he's interested in the children as a group of individuals and political animals. Oe's story is less leisurely, and told primarily as the narrator's inner journey. I'm going to call it dreamlike, but not in a drifty, serene sense; I mean dreamlike in the way a Maddin or Švankmajer movie are: stark, intense, mythic, freighted with meaning.
The translation is occasionally clumsy. "I'm not going to do that kind of thing," rather than "I won't do any such thing" or "Li stuck it out" where "Li stood his ground" might have worked better. But that may be a deliberate policy on the translators' part, as they say in the introduction that Oe strove for what they call a "clotted" style. I'd be interested to compare this to another translation, but that small quibble doesn't diminish the power of this major work. ...more
Apr 01, 2011 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: reviews
From the back of the book: Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids recounts the exploits of fifteen teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime, where they are feared and detested by the local peasants.
So, comparisons have been running wild to Lord of the Flies, which seem apt in lots of ways: the focus on children, and henceforth, the focus on society. But this is a book that's really drenched in the madness of war; although the group of children, as voiced by their leader, From the back of the book: Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids recounts the exploits of fifteen teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime, where they are feared and detested by the local peasants.
So, comparisons have been running wild to Lord of the Flies, which seem apt in lots of ways: the focus on children, and henceforth, the focus on society. But this is a book that's really drenched in the madness of war; although the group of children, as voiced by their leader, do apparently go mad in a very primal sort of way (never as brutal as Flies), it is mostly society, including nearly every adult, that interrupts the children's passage into society, and not necessarily the children who lose their minds and kill each other. As Oe deliberately says of the adults as the children starve at night: . . . all the malicious people were fast asleep.
In this book, the first I've ever read of Oe (and definitely not the last), the invasion of disease, the plague, and a wartime, bloodthirsty, deranged group of villagers, do all of the harm. In fact, the only adult voice of reason is the defector, the soldier who saw the true horrors of war and took his chances in escape. He'd rather be one of them, one of the children, the "useless vermin," versus being a cold-blooded murderer, a soldier in an unjust war. He's seen it alright, and to him the onslaught of death by the plague that has no human origins, is a better death than by the insanity of war. After they've been sealed in the village by barricade, one of the kids looks up at the person keeping watch with a gun—if the children ever became courageous enough to attempt escape—and he says, "Let's go back. I'd rather catch the plague than be shot."
These children, hopeless, considered to be equals to rats by the villagers, surprisingly find a way to adapt to their environment, find and scavenge for food, create a system, although of much idleness (But there was nothing else we could do, so we went on patiently eating.), but with real concern for their fellow comrades. And as an anti-Lord of the Flies, their leader, (view spoiler)[who fights with an intruding Korean boy, actually learns to appreciate him as one of their own, and they band together and spark a mutual friendship. (hide spoiler)]
(view spoiler)[When it all comes crashing down, and the plague suddenly erupts in their camp, and the very thing that they most feared at the beginning (abandonment) is reversed as the villagers return, we witness the true origins of brutality: the adults, war-fevered, who do all the world's killing, all the slaying of the world's women and children as indiscriminately as cattle, who are the conductors of all the wars that have killed more children than any plague ever could. They return as if nothing even happened. And to their surprise, after their long delay in a corresponding village, presumably "safe," they are shocked to still see most of the children alive. (hide spoiler)]
The real capabilities of human brutality and violence become evident. War, as a catalyst of abuse and trauma, is similar to an abused child's long negated trauma, and eventually their own juxtaposed form of mental corruption, a virus, the hate, that attempts to transform anyone it can latch onto. . . . it's as if the dead can and will be resurrected, bringing less importance to death, and death as only a stage of continuous suffering. We are already ghosts. The children who were little more than pests, were already considered dead.
In a swift 170-some pages, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, is a startling testament to real-life brutality. Oe's writing is precise and not overly melodramatic, as one may expect, considering the subject matter. In fact, the beats, the pace of the book is like a kindling fire that only grows warmer over time; we aren't taken to other characters and settings; we stumble onto them naturally, and naturally we care for them and exist with them.
Not purely an anti-war novel, but along the lines of one. It's been said before, and I'll say it again: any story that depicts war realistically, is in actuality, an anti-war book. And this is definitely one of the best. ...more
Mar 28, 2012 Bookguide rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: 1001-book-list
PerryFran's BookCrossing book ring: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6...
I enjoyed reading this story, despite the brutality and revolting descriptions, but it was another one of those books on the 1001 list which made me wonder why it was included. I suspect that if it had been written by somebody from the USA or UK, it wouldn't have made the cut, and likewise the fact that it has been translated into English and is very short makes it more attractive as a Japanese text to be studied, partic PerryFran's BookCrossing book ring: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6...
I enjoyed reading this story, despite the brutality and revolting descriptions, but it was another one of those books on the 1001 list which made me wonder why it was included. I suspect that if it had been written by somebody from the USA or UK, it wouldn't have made the cut, and likewise the fact that it has been translated into English and is very short makes it more attractive as a Japanese text to be studied, particularly as Kenzaburo Oe has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It doesn't really give me a clear picture of a specifically Japanese book, however. Although I wouldn't go so far as to say it could have been set anywhere, it could have been set anywhere where boys have been imprisoned, starved, made to do hard labour and marched off to escape war.
When I first started reading the book, after reading the introduction and back cover, I thought the book would have more parallels to William Golding's Lord of the Flies, where the stranded boys become savages. In this book, however, it is the boys who organise themselves into a civilisation, and the adults who behave barbarically. Initially, the boys are cut off from society because of some misdemeanour, not only violence, but also sexual "deviation" such as homosexual behaviour. In fact, being forced together in this unnatural environment with only other boys at adolescence only encourages such liaisons. Having been rejected by society, the boys are then rejected by their parents who fail to collect them when requested to do so; these are the boys whose parents did not come when asked to do so. It is therefore not surprising that the bond between the narrator and his brother is so strong, as the younger boy has been the only one to continually support him. Every time that the boys feel safe, or find some source of hope, it is taken away from them, and they are abandoned to fend for themselves in the cut-off village. The only amazing thing is that they continue to put any faith in the adults.
There was a recurring theme in the descriptions of dry grass and dried leaves, and also many descriptions of eyes: dark, limpid, clear, sparkling. This made me wonder if these are symbolic in Japanese culture, just as I was surprised by imagery of the bowed neck of the girl which was compared to a pigeon's back. Another thing that struck me was that this was set in an isolated village in the mountains, and the talk of plague and remote villages reminded me of another book set in Japan, Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden, where there is an isolated leper's colony. I also noticed that there is a description of snow as "ashen brownish snow", where I would consider ashen to be grey, and I wondered if this is one of those occasions where different languages have different cut-off points for the naming of colours; at what point does yellow become orange, or blue become green? I have also observed this in the difference between orange and brown in Dutch and English. Files which I described as brown were called orange by Dutch colleagues.
All in all, I enjoyed the story, but it doesn't make me want to actively search for any more of Kenzaburo Oe's books. ...more
Jul 09, 2017 Jordan Batchelor rated it really liked it · review of another edition
"Listen, someone like you should be throttled while they're still a kid. We squash vermin while it's small. We're peasants: we nip the bad buds early."
Written here in the climatical moment, Kenzaburo Oe's 1958 Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids removes its dressing and lays bare what we sense throughout this 190-page book. There is no equivocation, no explanation, and no sympathy. A group of reformatory boys, all pubescent or pre-pubescent, are herded to a remote village in northern Japan during warti "Listen, someone like you should be throttled while they're still a kid. We squash vermin while it's small. We're peasants: we nip the bad buds early."
Written here in the climatical moment, Kenzaburo Oe's 1958 Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids removes its dressing and lays bare what we sense throughout this 190-page book. There is no equivocation, no explanation, and no sympathy. A group of reformatory boys, all pubescent or pre-pubescent, are herded to a remote village in northern Japan during wartime. There they are treated worse than the disease-infected animals they're charged with burying. When the villagers abscond during the night to avoid the plague-ridden environment, the boys are left with an empty village and sweet freedom. They meet several new characters who play important roles during this ironically joyful time. When the villagers return to find their houses broken into and occupied, they give the starving and beaten boys an ultimatum: either take food and hostility, but do not report the villagers' previous abandonment, or be forcibly evacuated into the blustery forest to fend for themselves.
The most redeeming part of this story was the budding adolescent relationship between an unnamed girl and the unnamed narrator. The girl was found next to her deceased mother after the villagers fled. Initially very wary, the narrator doesn't make much of her at first. But after he injures himself pulling a favor for the girl, they both find first-love-like intimacy with one another. This is all done in Oe's hyper-realistic style, so one of their first intimate encounters is the boy roughly placing his small, erect penis on the girl's "sex" in a cold warehouse, before getting up and leaving. Also due to Oe's unrelenting realism, we do not get to enjoy this small patch of warmth for long. The girl contracts the plague after being bit by the village dog, bringing this dark Utopian phase to an end. Also resulting is the dog's euthanasia-by-bludgeoning and the narrator's younger brother running away, presumably to his death.
The setting is harsh, sparse, and unrelenting, which is reflected in Oe's writing style. Other than the nice metaphorical tie-in with the title, Oe's strong literary devices are his similes. Ones like, "We soon became bored with this one-sided game of tag and, ignoring them like trees and grass, devoted ourselves to our own games" stand out as nicely parallel to the natural scenery of the story itself. Like the title, Oe seems to nip the bad buds of florid writing early.
The final scene reminds one of Shusaku Endo's Silence, where a Jesuit priest is forced to trample a picture of Jesus, or else allow fellow priests to suffer horrendously. That of course is a story about the true meaning of Christian faith. In Nip the Buds, it is about the villager's faith in the children to keep their silence. Each child is plied with food to garner their silence. The narrator, however, due to his fledgling maturity, honor for his missing brother, whom the villagers are actively searching for, and a host of other emotions that developed during the phases of this story, rejects the offer. He is sent to the edge of the village to enter the unknown forest alone. At the last minute, the accompanying villager tries to murder the boy, who escapes but does not get far. A group of villagers gang together to hunt down the one "bud" who isn't willing to offer his silence. We do not learn of the narrator's fate. 3.5/5 Rating.
Goodreads Librari...: First published date 3 18 Apr 17, 2015 01:20PM
edition 1 19 Dec 04, 2008 09:25PM
Cultural > Japan
Asian Literature > Japanese Literature
About Kenzaburō Ōe
Kenzaburō Ōe
Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎), is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.
Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condens Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎), is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.
Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." ...more
Books by Kenzaburō Ōe
Trivia About Nip the Buds, Sho...
3 trivia questions
Quotes from Stârpiți răul de ...
"I thought about death and was gripped by feelings which choked my chest and made my throat dry, a sudden pushing and shoving in my guts. It was a sort of chronic ailment I had. Once that feeling and that agitation of my whole body had begun, I wouldn't be able to shake it off until I got to asleep. And I couldn't recall it with the same impact in the daytime." — 6 likes
"Time doesn't move at all, I thought in irritation. Like a domestics animal, time doesn't move without human beings' strict supervision. Like a horse or a sheep, time won't move a step without grown ups' orders. We are a steady state in the stagnation of time." — 1 likes

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Keep in mind, animal medicine is not necessarily your "totem." I will get into totems after I complete animal medicine. Animal Medicine is that which you need to learn RIGHT NOW! and the lesson that is coming across your IMMEDIATE path. Another animal may come cross your path tomorrow. Your attention may be called to one of these animals through television, conversation, daily experience, etc. Regardless of how one of these animals comes across your path, study the message and apply to your daily Life . . . they have a message for you!


text:
AKA Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Born: 23-Jul-1823
Died: 26-Nov-1896
Location of death: Lymington, Hampshire, England
Cause of death: unspecified
Religion: Roman Catholic
Occupation: Poet, Critic
Nationality: England
Executive summary: The Unknown Eros
English poet and critic, the eldest son of Peter George Patmore, himself an author, was born at Woodford in Essex (now part of London), on the 23rd of July 1823. He was privately educated, being his father's intimate and constant companion, and derived from him his early literary enthusiasm. It was his first ambition to become an artist, and he showed much promise, being awarded the silver palette of the Society of Arts in 1838. In the following year he was sent to school in France, where he studied for six months, and began to write poetry. On his return his father contemplated the publication of some of these youthful poems; but in the meanwhile Coventry had evinced a passion for science and the poetry was set aside. He soon, however, returned to literary interests, moved towards them by the sudden success of Alfred Lord Tennyson; and in 1844 he published a small volume of Poems, which was not without individuality, but marred by inequalities of workmanship. It was widely criticized, both in praise and blame; and Patmore, distressed at its reception, bought up the remainder of the edition and caused it to be destroyed. What chiefly wounded him was a cruel review in Blackwood, written in the worst style of unreasoning abuse; but the enthusiasm of private friends, together with their wiser criticism, did much to help him and to foster his talent. Indeed, the publication of this little volume bore immediate fruit in introducing its author to various men of letters, among whom was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, through whose offices Patmore became known to Holman Hunt, and was thus drawn into the eddies of the pre-Raphaelite movement, contributing his poem "The Seasons" to the Germ. At this time Patmore's father became involved in financial embarrassments; and in 1846 Monckton Milnes secured for the son an assistant-librarianship in the British Museum, a post which he occupied industriously for nineteen years, devoting his spare time to poetry. In 1847 he married Emily, daughter of Dr Andrews of Camberwell. At the Museum he was austere and remote among his companions, but was nevertheless instrumental in 1852 in starting the Volunteer movement. He wrote an important letter to The Times upon the subject, and stirred up much martial enthusiasm among his colleagues. In the next year he republished, in Tamerton Church Tower, the more successful pieces from the Poems of 1844, adding several new poems which showed distinct advance, both in conception and treatment; and in the following year (1854) appeared the first part of his best known poem, "The Angel in the House", which was continued in "The Espousals" (1856), "Faithful for Ever" (1860), and "The Victories of Love" (1862). In 1862 he lost his wife, after a long and lingering illness, and shortly afterwards joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1865 he married again, his second wife being Miss Marianne Byles, second daughter of James Byles of Bowden Hall, Gloucester; and a year later purchased an estate in East Grinstead, the history of which may be read in How I managed my Estate, published in 1886. In 1877 appeared The Unknown Eros, which unquestionably contains his finest work in poetry, and in the following year Amelia, his own favorite among his poems, together with an interesting, though by no means undisputable, essay on English Metrical Law. This departure into criticism he continued further in 1879 with a volume of papers, entitled Principle in Art, and again in 1893 with Religio poetae. Meanwhile his second wife died in 1880, and in the next year he married Harriet Robson. In later years he lived at Lymington, where he died on the 26th of November 1896.
A collected edition of his poems appeared in two volumes in 1886, with a characteristic preface which might serve as the author's epitaph. "I have written little", it runs; "but it is all my best; I have never spoken when I had nothing to say, nor spared time or labor to make my words true. I have respected posterity; and should there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect me." The obvious sincerity which underlies this statement, combined with a certain lack of humor which peers through its na�vet�, points to two of the principal characteristics of Patmore's earlier poetry; characteristics which came to be almost unconsciously merged and harmonized as his style and his intention drew together into unity. In the higher flights, to which he arose as his practice in the art grew perfected, he is always noble, and often sublime. His best work is found in the volume of odes called The Unknown Eros, which is full not only of passages but of entire poems in which exalted thought is expressed in poetry of the richest and most dignified melody. The animating spirit of love, moreover, has here deepened and intensified into a crystalline harmony of earthly passion with the love that is divine and transcending; the outward manifestation is regarded as a symbol of a sentiment at once eternal and quintessential. Spirituality informs his inspiration; the poetry is of the finest elements, glowing and alive. The magnificent piece in praise of winter, the solemn and beautiful cadences of "Departure", and the homely but elevated pathos of "The Toys", are in their various manners unsurpassed in English poetry for sublimity of thought and perfection of expression. Patmore is one of the few Victorian poets of whom it may confidently be predicted that the memory of his greater achievements will outlive all consideration of occasional lapses from taste and dignity. He wrote, at his best, in the grand manner, melody and thought according with perfection of expression, and his finest poems have that indefinable air of the inevitable which is after all the touchstone of the poetic quality. His son, Henry John Patmore (1860-1883), left a number of poems posthumously printed at Mr. Daniell's Oxford Press, which show an unmistakable lyrical quality.
Father: Peter George Patmore (author)
Wife: Emily Andrews (m. 1847, d. 1862)
Son: Henry John Patmore (b. 1860, d. 1883)
Wife: Marianne Byles (m. 1865, d. 1880)
Wife: Harriet Robson (m. 1881, until his death)
British Museum Assistant Librarian (19 years)
NNDB MAPPER Create a map starting with Coventry Patmore


From former magazine editor, Veronica Chambers, comes the must-read summer book for all girls who have ever felt less than gorgeous. "PLUS" is the story of pre-med student Bee Wilson who, after being dumped by her first real college boyfriend, enters a downward spiral of depression. She takes her unhappiness out on food and winds up gaining the Freshman 15 (plus 10, for good measure.) One day, while enjoying a jumbo chocolate chip muffin at Dean & Deluca, Bee is discovered by a plus size modelling agency executive and, soon after, offered a job as the face of Prada's new line.
But being a world-famous model isn't easy, as Bee soon realizes. She is forced to vanquish her skinny rivals, fend off sleavy photogs and keep jealous frenemies away, all the while, choosing between her first love and that adorable Columbia freshman that she tutors.
In a country obsessed with weight, diets and a very narrow idea of what is a "perfect body," this book is a breath of fresh air! Beauty does not have to be a size 2, after all. This book is not only the perfect breezy read for a warm summer day but it also celebrates each and every girls' unique Body Peace!
"PLUS" is available in stores and online now, so be sure to pick up your own copy ASAP! Have you ever felt like you didn't measure up to what society tells you is 'beautiful'? How did you overcome that? Sound off in comments!