To read this version of "Life in the Cul-de-Sac" is to experience two conflicting emotions. On the one hand, there is admiration for the storyteller, as the dozen linked vignettes that make up the book gradually coalesce into a bleak yet powerful portrait of life on a single dead-end street in the western suburbs of Tokyo 20 odd years ago. On the other hand, there is extreme irritation with the translator, whose tin ear and shaky grammar combine to make that portrait much more obscure than one feels it must be in the original Japanese. Senji Kuroi, an award-winning novelist and essayist, could not possibly write so badly.
Don't be put off, however. Even though you may have to grit your teeth to keep reading, the picture that emerges from the fog of graceless prose is worth the effort. "Life in the Cul-de-Sac" is a provocative, severe, even joyless work, but it is one that will stay with you.
The novel was originally serialized in 12 parts and subsequently published in book form in 1984 under the title "Gunsei." (The Japanese word, which means "gregariousness" or, more abstractly, "communal life," is clearly intended ironically. Life in this particular cul-de-sac could hardly be less communal. The English title is not so subtle, but it is certainly apt, suggesting as it does the book's governing theme of lives going nowhere, connecting with nothing.)