The Paper Door: Other Stories

``Sometimes as delicate as haiku, at others samurai-like in their robustness, these 17 stories cry out for a translator with a sensitive ear and a taste for words. But here the plodding prose, the use and reuse of throwaway phrases, the clumsy dialogue contrive to turn each shyly articulated episode into a banal account and obscure the distinctiveness of the voice and setting,'' complained PW. (May)