BULLSEYE!

Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Bullseye! translated by Andrew Driver successfully mixes dark humor and satire in an unusual collection of short stories collected throughout his writing career. The collection is filled with both bizarre and mysterious stories, as well as stories that will push the average reader beyond their comfort zone. My personal favorite story was “Playing Hide and Seek,” as former schoolmates revisit their old game from the past and how it impacted their future relationships. I also quite enjoyed the story “Bullseye,” in which we meet a man who is aged, a bit deranged, and the source of mockery from those around him as he tries to navigate his way through a society that is known to him, but in which he is lost at the same time. I found both “Narcissism” and “Sadism” to be quite disturbing in their themes of violence and rape of sex androids. I also appreciated that many of the stories were left open-ended, which is not something that I usually encounter in my reading. Overall, Bullseye is full of vivid images and descriptive writing and, whether you enjoy each story or not, the pictures will be in your head. Driver has done a fantastic job of compiling the many styles of Tsutsui into one book of eclectic short stories.