In the following review, Hanson offers a mixed assessment of Kitchen.

A Japanese maxim warns that "A gentleman does not go near a kitchen." Traditionally a cramped, dingy place—even in an otherwise wellappointed home—the old-fashioned kitchen revealed the low status of the women who spent much of their time there. Yet today, though still small by American standards and still largely the domain of women, kitchens are the showcases of Japanese consumer affluence.

Banana Yoshimoto's first novel evokes this modern opulence even in its title, which uses the trendy English loan-word kitchin rather than the Japanese term, daidokoro. Ms. Yoshimoto was all of 24 years old when Kitchen was published in Japan in 1988; with its kooky young woman protagonist, Mikage Sakurai, the novel—a best-seller that is now in its 57th printing—clearly has spoken to the author's contemporaries.

"The place I...