If
you're just starting out reading Japanese books and would benefit from an author
with a compact, no-frills writing style who still manages to make his stories
flow and draw you into them, then this collection of seven short stories may
be just the book for you. On the other hand, if you prefer that the author maintain
a degree of plausibility in the way he ends the stories, you may want to steer
clear.Akagawa Jiro is an extremely prolific author, and that led me to not expect much from him. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he has a readily readable style of writing, and thought I might look forward to reading more of his books. But the weakness/implausibility of the endings of some of the stories makes me hesitate to invest the time in reading a full-length novel only to find the same problem. In this collection, had the last story been the first, I would have put the book down and read no further.
If you're not overly picky about plausibility, by all means read the book. If you are, give it a pass.