The Premonition, Banana Yoshimoto
The Premonition, Banana Yoshimoto
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The Premonition
A Novel

Author: Banana Yoshimoto

Narrator: Kathleen Li

Unabridged: 3 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/21/2023


Synopsis

Yayoi, a nineteen-year-old woman from a seemingly loving middle-class family, has lately been haunted by the feeling that she has forgotten something important from her childhood. Her premonition grows stronger day by day and, as if led by it, she decides to move in with her mysterious aunt, Yukino.

No one understands her aunt's unusual lifestyle. For as long as Yayoi can remember, Yukino has lived alone in an old gloomy single-family home, quietly, almost as though asleep. When she is not working, Yukino spends all day in her pajamas, clipping her nails and trimming her split ends. She eats only when she feels like it, and she often falls asleep lying on her side in the hallway. She sometimes wakes Yayoi at 2:00 a.m. to be her drinking companion, sometimes serves flan in a huge mixing bowl for dinner, and watches Friday the 13th over and over to comfort herself. A child study desk, old stuffed animals—things Yukino wants to forget—are piled up in her backyard like a graveyard of her memories.

An instant bestseller in Japan when first published in 1988, The Premonition is finally available in English, translated by the celebrated Asa Yoneda.

About Banana Yoshimoto

Banana Yoshimoto is the author of the international bestseller Kitchen. She has published ten books in English translation, including Goodbye Tsugumi, Moshi Moshi, and most recently, Dead-End Memories. Her work has been translated and published in more than thirty countries. In Italy, she won the Scanno Literary Prize in 1993, the Fendissime Literary Prize in 1996, the Maschera d'Argento Prize in 1999, and the Capri Award in 2011. She lives in Tokyo.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Liong on January 07, 2025

I read her books such as : Kitchen, Asleep, Goodbye Tsugami, The Lake, Lizard, Hardboiled and Hard Luck, Moshi Moshi, Dead-End Memories: Stories and I just finished this book. I love reading her novels that explore nature, life, and love. Overall, The Premonition is a beautiful and moving story. I hope y......more

Goodreads review by Daniella on October 30, 2023

2.5 I was on board for the beginning but then we entered the Taboo Relationship Era with 1) a couple who were raised as brother and sister and 2) a teacher and student. Wasn’t really a fan of the book supporting these forms of relationships as romantic love - and making it seem like the reader should......more

Goodreads review by luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) on January 08, 2024

3 ½ stars The Premonition is textbook Banana Yoshimoto: we have a lively yet inexplicably melancholic narrator prone to navel-gazing, character(s) with psychic abilities, domestic backdrops, and plenty of understated conversations which are often of an idiosyncratic realism while at other times they......more

Goodreads review by leah on October 13, 2023

tinted with tender melancholy, the premonition follows 19 year old yayoi, who lives with her perfect family yet is plagued by the thought that she has forgotten something important about her childhood. due to this premonition, yayoi moves in with her mysterious aunt in a quest to uncover her seeming......more

Goodreads review by Katie on April 10, 2024

Not my favourite Banana Yoshimoto novel - beautiful writing as always, but I couldn't quite get over the very taboo/inappropriate relationships explored.......more