![]() |
Now | 2025 | Previous | Articles | Road Essays | Road Reviews | Author | Black Authors | Title | Source | Age | Genre | Series | Format | Inclusivity | LGBTA+ | Art Portfolio | Purchase Art | WIP |
|
The Tatami Time Machine Blues: 07/12/24
The Tatami Time Machine Blues by Tomihiko Morimi and Emily Balistrieri (translator) (2020) officially is the sequel to The Tatami Galaxy (2004). But with the way the author reuses characters, it feels like the third book, with The Night is Short, Walk on Girl (2006) in the middle. A year or so has passed since the unnamed narrator dreamt he was trapped in a labyrinth of endless four mat tatami rooms. Now he has moved up to the second floor into the only room with an air conditioner. That is until the day when a spilled bottle of Coke shorts out the remote rendering the AC useless. As the previous books have demonstrated, the author likes repetition of scenes to further explore themes. So it's no surprise that the scene with the remote will be replayed. The mechanism this time, though, is a time machine built on a tatami mat (of course). Of all these books, Tatami Time Machine Blues is the shortest. It deals with the day of the event, the day before the event, the day of the event again, and tomorrow. For all the desire to have remote working again, there's also the very real fear that doing so would destroy the universe!
Like the other two books, Tatami Time Machine Blues sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. In the chart I've included The Night is Short, Walk on Girl as it is more closely situated on the spectrum to Time Machine Blues than the first book. This book has a couple or family as travelers, to uhoria, via the labyrinth. Five stars Comments (0) |