Secret rendezvous

For those of you familiar with the works of Kobo Abe, be prepared for another wild ride in Secret Rendevous. Our narrator, "the man", is in search of his wife. She had been transported away from home by ambulance in the middle of the night although no one reported a medical emergency nor had anything been wrong with her. In the morning, "the man" decides to follow up on his wife's mysterious disappearance.

"The man" finds the hospital into which he believes his wife disappeared and begins more earnest attempts to find her. His search is bizarre. He is told by his friend, "the horse", to keep a notebook of his quest and record himself in the third person (hence "the man"). What ensues is a strange, sexy, almost funny search through a hospital which we soon realize is actually some sort of a labyrinth.

This book is divided into three notebooks and an epilogue. You probably will have no idea what's going on until you begin the third notebook. It's all very confusing, but I think I did well in trying to understand it. I've given up trying to understand Abe's works while I read them, however I find them to be exceptionally well written, detailed, and of great interest.

Is this novel a social satire? I don't know. As in The Woman in the Dunes and The Box Man, two other works of Abe which I found intriguing, this is a genuinely fun work to attempt to decipher. Try it!… (more)