Emi Yagi, who won Japan's coveted Osamu Dazai Prize with Diary of a Void, returns with another delightfully surreal novel, When the Museum Is Closed. Yuki Tejima smoothly translates, capturing Yagi's impressively matter-of-fact tone as inexplicably zany events continue to happen with unquestioning, quotidian ease.
Rika Horauchi is starting her new job. Her "shift was once a week, and no experience was required aside from conversation-level Latin," never mind that it's a dead language. A former professor who recognized Rika's remarkable language skills recommended her to the museum's curator, Hashibami. She's "been hired to talk to the ancient Roman statue of Venus" in the octagonal room of the titular museum every Monday, when doors are closed to the public. Venus is her preferred moniker over Aphrodite, because she's a "very 'ancient Greek goddess,' but I was born in Rome," she explains. "Venus is actually my English name." Despite Rika's initial hesitation--"I felt out of place here"--Venus is quite engaging, bitingly funny, and surprisingly accommodating, demanding that Hashibami hunt down the perfect chair for Rika's comfort. "I've never sat in a chair," she quips. Despite the distraction of "her lush body curved to perfection," conversations with the goddess of love and beauty grow easier, especially since Venus "never [runs] out of memories." Rika, too, opens up, sharing the provenance of her Latin fluency--a "short-term study abroad in Finland," during which she conversed only in Latin with her roommate. Over cups of tea (the one in front of Venus untouched), statue and human share endless stories.
Outside the museum, Rika lives in a "dilapidated two-storey building" where the cheap rent means, by default, that the aging landlady has become her responsibility. Ever since finishing her university degree years ago, Rika has worked in a few freezer warehouses, where conversations are limited and she won't perspire. Since childhood, "a ridiculous yellow raincoat" has hampered her life. No one else can see it, but it weighs her down, trips her up, turns into a "sauna suit" causing heat rashes; avoidance and isolation are her best defense. Becoming intimate with a marble statue, however, proves a transformative experience.
Yagi has written a whimsical tale highlighting unexpected relationships--particularly those where one is finally seen and heard honestly, regardless of whether as a coveted goddess or ostracized human. As a slim novella, When the Museum Is Closed might seem initially spare but it's rife with insights on language, communication, love, identity, definitions of beauty, gender roles, and the possibility of true individual freedom. --Terry Hong
Shelf Talker: Emi Yagi's sophomore novel is another surreal delight, centering on Latin-speaking meetings between the goddess of love and beauty and her part-time conversationalist.