From Publishers Weekly Japan's Yoshimoto (N.P.) delivers an engaging， rather lightweight collection of six stories chronicling the romantic adventures， spiritual yearnings and familial troubles of a hip set of young， Japanese professionals. Each story is told in a spare， quizzical， highly conversational style， through the eyes of characters who encounter odd coincidences and spiritual epiphanies while attempting to negotiate life's turning points. In the title piece， a man salvages his relationship with his lover， an antisocial acupuncturist with mysterious healing powers whom he calls Lizard， by making a pilgrimage to an ancient temple and sharing disturbing childhood secrets. In "Blood and Water，" a woman flees her parents' Buddhist sect in a provincial village， falls in love with a man in Tokyo who makes amulets and gradually comes to terms with her own religious aspirations. "A Strange Tale from Down by the River" is an allegory about a woman who abandons a life of shallow sexual exploits， recognizes her own spiritual affinities with the natural world and gets married. A lesser effort from Yoshimoto， yet there's a fleeting pathos to these offbeat tales of a contemporary Tokyo interpenetrated by the routines of modern office life and the animistic forces of the ancient world. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information， Inc. From Library Journal Enormously popular in Japan， Yoshimoto has gained an American audience with her hip novels Kitchen (LJ 12/92) and NP (LJ 1/94). Her first collection of short stories will appeal strongly to "X-ers." Articulate and young but already jaded and wistful urbanites populate these reflective tales of relationships and discovery. Lacking faith， hope， and a substantive cultural context， the protagonists compensate with self-scrutiny and emotional intrigue. Sometimes they stumble upon magic， as in the figure of the enigmatic healer Lizard or a trenchant shape shifter on a commuter train. Unfortunately， between writing and translation， Yoshimoto's concepts consistently outshine her execution; facile descriptions and narratorial overinterpretation weigh down these thoughtful stories. For young adult and fiction collections.Janet Ingraham， Worthington P.L， OhioCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information， Inc. See all Editorial Reviews