The Naked Eye by Yoko Tawada

I enjoyed reading this book because the author has an original style. The forward notes this is Yoko Tawada's first truly bilingual book. Previously, Tawada would write a book in either Japanese or German, and then translate. For this book she wrote some chapters in German and some in Japanese. The author grew up in Japan and then lived in Germany.

Catherine Denueve's movies are a part of the story and I appreciated this because she is my favorite actress. Catherine Denueve's beauty and superior acting are wonderful to watch in French films. The movies featuring Catherine Denueve are the titles and reflections for each chapter and include Repulsion, Dancer in the Dark, and Belle du Jour.

This book begins with a Vietnamese high school girl. She is the head of her class and has won a school contest to travel to East Berlin to give a speech at the International Youth Conference. She is excited about her first time on a plane and has practiced the speech she will give in Russian. The night before the conference she arrives at the hotel and is hungry, waiting for food at a restaurant. Her food order is delayed and while she impatiently waits for some potatoes, a man named Jorg sits by her and pours her cup after cup of vodka. The next thing she remembers she is in Jorg's apartment in Borchum, on the other side of the Berlin Wall. She has missed the youth conference and wants to get back to her hotel, but instead is pulled away from the life she knows.

Is it Stokholm Syndrome or is this her destiny? With indifference she sleeps instead of confronting her problems and stays with her captor Jorg. One day while going for a walk she decides to hop on a train to try to hitch a ride back to East Berlin or Moscow. Instead, the train is going to Paris. She meets another Vietnamese girl on the train who lives in Paris that lets her stay with her in Paris. She also meets a Vietnamese surgeon, a theater group, a prostitute, and a librarian that all help her and let her stay with them.

In Paris she becomes obsessed with films by Catherine Denueve and watches the same films over and over again. She imagines Catherine is speaking to her through the characters in the movies and relates the stories to her life. She is encouraged to go back to school and even provided with free room and board and pocket money by everyone she stays with, but instead repeats the cycle of going to the movies everyday. This reminds me of Truman Capote's short story The Headless Hawk, where another young homeless girl also watches the movies everyday and accepts pocket money from an art curator she lives with.

The girl's real name is never revealed, and her indifference and disorientation show a lack of identity. The girl is drifting through life without purpose, sleeping in response to stress and watching films, letting others take care of her and make decisions for her.