The Life of a Stupid Man - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

This short novel was originally written in Japanese and then translated into English. I thoroughly enjoyed all three of the stories but the last less than the first two.
    The writing and language used in all three stories are clear and easy to follow. However, the first story, In a Bamboo Grove, is a bit hard to understand due to the changing of perspectives of people. It is about a man that is murdered and little by little, we find out who killed the man as each of the characters take the stand. In addition to that, it is hard to distinguish when a different person speaks as in the story, they don't use and speech marks or even change the line. If you are reading the story and fully understand, it will not be hard to follow the dialogue.
   This first story was extremely intriguing because of the three win characters: the wife, the husband and the killer. All three of them have such different personalities and they all contrast and clash each other. I found the wife the most interesting because of her swift changing of mind. However, we never really know which story is true, the wife's, the killer or the story told true a prophet, as all of them are different.

The second story, Death Register, is Akutagawa talking about his family life and how he lost all of his closest relatives. The first lost his father and then his mother went mad so he was then forced to be adopted by his uncle. Soon after that, his mother then died at the young age of 11.
   I like the way that he describes all of his family members, especially the way he describes his older sister: Hatsuko. Although he never met her, he feels the closest to her. He describes her in a way that it makes everyone was rot meet her.

The third story, The Life of a Stupid Man, consists of 51 short reflections of previous memories in his life. I have never read an autobiography written in this way and I found it amazing. Instead of him writing long paragraphs of important aspects in his life, he writes the memories in just a few sentences and each of the small accounts are given a title. When reading these memories, I felt like I was instantly transported to the time and place of the event because of his amazing writing. Throughout the 51 memories, there are some recurring themes so it makes the story flow almost like a poem. These memories shows that he was very wise. However he committed suicide at the age of 35 so it means that he must have written his autobiography around his thirties.

I honestly enjoyed these short stories a lot and I would recommend this to a lot of people that enjoy stories about death.