Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto, 152 pages

Mikage loves kitchens. They're reflections of the people who use them, live in them, commune in them. When the grandmother who raised her passes away, Mikage takes to sleeping on the floor next to the refrigerator in their suddenly still apartment, desperately clinging to the appliance's hum and watching the stars outside the kitchen window. She should get up, go to class, start looking for a smaller apartment; but she can't move, can't find the energy to stop herself from disappearing--until a gentle knock on the door pulls her to her feet and shows her that love is neither confined to any one place nor the fixed result of some unchanging, irreproducible recipe.

In this novella and its accompanying short story "Moonlight Shadow," kinship means more than just a blood relationship. Family are those whose presence makes food taste better; for whose sake we would do the sweetest, most foolish things; and whose support keeps us afloat when sorrow threatens to pull us under. Whether we've known them our whole lives or four years or five minutes, to share a cup of tea or even a bucket of fried chicken with the right person is to share each other's burdens and nourish one another in body and soul. Loss may be inevitable, but love gives us the strength to move forward and smile.

Honest and uplifting, simple yet profound.