Among two stories written with magical realism(The Ice Man and Straw Husband) and two stories from Where The Wild Ladies Are, the four stories all discuss the love from women to men and marriage problems. Although I feel I know nothing about marriage I still can feel the discussion about alienation and inevitable conflicts in marriage. In Iced Man and Straw Husband, this kind of problem is shown more directly. The protagonists in both stories marry someone who is not supported by their family. They all believe they made the right decision at first and then they gradually found they have an unreachable gap between the one they married.
For the Ice Man, the protagonists try to make up the gap by trying to visit the South Pole, a place that's in the Ice Man's favor. Then it turns out that she couldn't fit into the environment and she was finally "frozen". Maybe she found she was not able to address the issues between them, she realized her child would also be affected by her husband and she couldn't help with it.
For Straw Husband, Tomoko irritated her husband just because of her carelessness which caused a scratch on her husband's car. Tomoko couldn't understand why this kind of small mistake could make her husband such angry. I think this refers to different values between men and women about things around them. People look upon something that might be nothing to speak of for other people, and this can cause conflicts since you can't easily change people's values on something. Just like what Tomoko did in the story, she made the apology, but her husband thinks she will still make the same mistake since her value don't change, she is just "doing that to prevent him getting angry with her."
In both stories, the protagonists firmly insist on marrying the man who is disliked by their family. Since in The Ice Man, it's described as "an Ice Man" I suppose it's the kind of people that doesn't fit into the society the protagonists live very well. Maybe some foreign people live in foreign countries? Also, I think the two stories imply that love makes people blind since the protagonists ignore all the advice and they seem to not have a happy ending.
For Silently Burning and Smartening Up, I found they are interesting to read but I think I don't get the hidden content behind the stories especially for Silently Burning.
While reading Smartening Up, I know depilation has been a severe phenomenon in Japan. I was watching some news from Japan and it says now some primary school students have started laser depilation which shocked me. In the story, the protagonist is very afraid of herself for not fulfilling all the responsibilities a female should fulfill in a relationship. She also became blind at first but I think after her aunt guided her she kind of realized what happened and started to get a "special trick"?
The delicate life the protagonists described at the beginning was interesting to read too. I even forgot I was reading a story that is supposed to draw a lot of inspiration from Japanese traditional ghost stories.
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