Oshidori - Lafcadio Hearn - A Short Summary & Review
Oshidori - Lafcadio Hearn - A Short Summary & Review
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Book Recommendation and Review.
A short summary:
Oshidori by Lafcadio Hearn is a brief but devastating ghost story rooted in Japanese folklore. The tale centers on a devoted married couple whose bond is violently shattered when a hunter kills the wife for sport, mistaking her humanity for expendability.
What follows is not a conventional revenge story, but a haunting meditation on loyalty, grief, and the consequences of cruelty. Through spare prose and symbolic imagery, Hearn allows the supernatural to emerge organically, blurring the boundary between the living and the dead in a way that feels inevitable rather than shocking.
My favorite quote from the story:
Questions to ponder while reading:
My review:
Oshidori is quick, eerie, and profoundly unsettling. It’s one of those stories that accomplishes more in a few pages than many novels do in hundreds.
I’ve read it so many times I nearly know it by heart, and it has never lost its power. The horror here isn’t loud; it’s moral. The act that sets the story in motion feels small to the perpetrator, yet its consequences echo endlessly.
This is the kind of story that stays with you long after it’s finished. It doesn’t explain itself or soften its message. It simply haunts, quietly, permanently.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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