Asa is married, and is fairly satisfied with her life, despite her lacklustre job. When her husband finds new employment, the couple must move to a country area near his parents. She quits her work, and his parents offer them free rent in a house next door to them. It’s a good deal, allowing them to save money, despite the privacy compromises inherent in the arrangement. With plenty of time now on Asa’s hands, she starts to explore the area, making short trips to the shops and checking out employment ads.
On one of her countryside strolls she sees a furry black animal and decides to follow it. It leads her to a marshy riverside area, full of bugs, beetles and other creepy-crawlies. In pursuit of this mysterious furry creature Asa falls into a hole. She manages to climb out, but the creature keeps appearing, and on subsequent sightings she runs into a stranger. The stranger she learns is her husband’s older brother, an oddball who’s been kept secret by his family. Despite being a shut-in, he enjoys spending time by the river bank, where groups of freewheeling children play in an almost pagan fairyland.
In some ways The Hole is a quirky take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and the book itself directly references this. For the most part it’s a strange and surreal story that contrasts mundane domestic details with nature’s weird, sometimes scary, underbelly. While the black creature is furry, and one presumes cute, it has white fangs that we learn can be quite dangerous. In this seemingly alternate universe there are bugs and insects that bite at flesh and riverside children, running half naked, concocting their own strange rituals, devoid of parental supervision.
It’s hard to figure out what The Hole is about, beyond being a hallucinatory, mind bending trip into the wild. Despite its deliriously baffling content, every page is a winner.
The Hole, by Hiroko Oyamada. Published by Granta. $27.99
AUG 24
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