The Woman in the Dunes

One of the highest candidates on my 'to be re-read' list. I don't know if I was fully prepared or invested enough to properly dissect the layers of The Woman in the Dunes, even though it has a simple premise. An entomology teacher takes a vacation to a sandy beach on the hunt for new insects for his collection. In doing so, he discovers a small village that is in the process of being swallowed up by the dunes. He is invited to stay the night at a woman's home by some of the villagers, a home that is at the bottom of a forty foot pit of sand. Soon, the man discovers that he has been trapped with/by her with the explicit purpose of helping the woman, and thus the village, prevent the sand from destroying her home. 

There's a strong sense of ambiguity that obfuscates the facts behind the story that I enjoyed greatly. Is the woman a victim of the villagers imprisonment, or a willing accomplice in the man's? Is the man actually trapped as he appears, or is his prison more mental than physical? How much time passes between events? How does the village benefit from the sand removal, really? All of these questions could be argued multiple ways, and convincingly so. This is a mysterious world, one where magic almost feels at work, and yet is so grounded in human emotions that it retains it's sobriety. 

How the man handles his circumstances is where Abe focuses most of the attention. The story goes to some extremely dark places rather quickly as the man experiences the full range of possible responses to his predicament. Both him and the woman feel detailed and intimately written, both struggling to cope in their own ways. Abe's prose has a similar flavor to Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police in it's surface level simplicity, and yet Abe also provides some really vivid and ornate passages that jumped off the page. He can write beautifully, but does so as points of emphasis against the rest of the writing. 

The Woman in the Dunes is an exploration of how our emotions effect our outlook on the world more than our circumstances. It implies that even with 'meager' means and purpose, great happiness and satisfaction can be accomplished. This is one of those novels that greatly rewards deep study and analysis. The harder you look, the more questions you find to ponder over. I'm sure that I will find more appreciation for it when I revisit it with more space to do so.