SOURCE: A review of NP in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 240, No. 50, December 13, 1993, p. 61.

In the following review, the critic describes NP as "ultimately unsatisfying."

Japanese novelist Yoshimoto follows her well-received Kitchen with [NP,] an off-beat, intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfying tale about incest, suicide and broken relationships. NP (after an old, sad song titled "North Point") is the name of a short-story collection published in America by celebrated émigré writer Sarao Takase. The book seems, as one character says, to be cursed: Takase committed suicide, as did three would-be Japanese translators. Four years after the death of her boyfriend, who was the last of these translators, narrator Kazami Kano becomes involved with Takase's children, the twins Saki and Otohiko, and Otohiko's girlfriend, the willowy, messed up Sui Minowa. All three of them are obsessed with NP and particularly one story about a man's affair with a young girl whom he...