Life for Sale - [short] Book Review
Would you be willing to sell your life for whatever amount, even though that money will be pointless after your death? Would you allow people to do whatever they want with your life, your body that carries your life? When 28-year-old Hanio put up his Life-for-Sale advert in the newspaper, he was prepared to meet death in whichever manner, but he didn’t expect himself to be tangled with so many lives. The unexpected twists in his life from meeting a supposed gang member to being sucked off by a vampire to a delusional homeowner, Hanio finds himself wondering if death is something he truly seeks now.
Mishima is known for composing some disturbing tales (and truths); Life for Sale also follows a similar unsettling tone. It’s a complete page-turner with its gripping dialogues and exceptional pacing. I was not expecting where the story was going, but let it take me, as if I, too, willingly gave my time and life to Hanio’s deadly yet ironically, lively, adventures. Upon the final pages, I was trying to make sense of what really happened. At one point, I even began questioning, was any of it real? But if I conclude by saying that Hanio’s services were simply his delusions, I’d be no different than the people that turned him away at the end when he sought help.
I found many interesting details in Mishima’s novella. For instance, after Hanio’s failed suicide attempt, he calls his new life “empty”, suggesting that nobody is there to welcome him — like they may have previously — in his rebirth, which is filled with significantly more loneliness and struggles. Hanio escapes death multiple times, each operation instead gives him another life, another chance to keep waiting, living. Perhaps the reason why he wants to die is because he no longer wants to wait. Waiting required perseverance for another day, patience towards the bothersome society, and forever hoping for kindness.
Despite being the one to sell his life, it is instead his clients who meet their demise, which causes further frustration and anguish to Hanio. It is as though he was unexpectedly taking their lives rather than selling them his. There is something that connects all of his clients, and that is desperation. Each of them carries a troublesome weight which they cannot take it upon themselves to unload and seek someone who can do the job for relieving their burden. From an old man seeking revenge against his cheating wife to a librarian in want of wealth to a vampire needing blood to an embassy of a country in search of a spy.
After taking a break from his business, Hanio travels to a place where no one knows him, to get a fresh start. It is around this period when he begins questioning if dying is something he wants now. When he realizes his delusional landowner, who is obsessed with his good health, tried to poison him, Hanio knows he desperately wants to live.
Towards the end, when Hanio seeks help from the police after being kidnapped and almost killed (against his will), he is turned away by them after his Life-for-Sale business comes to light. Thinking he’s wasting their time and being a complete “human trash” to even think of selling your life, the police kick him out. I think this ending truly summed up the reason why Hanio wanted to give in to death in the first place. Hanio’s desperate plea of help from the law enforcement who are meant to protect people, suggests his will to live. However, after their insults, Hanio returns to his previous notions of dying as he looks up to the “heavens”.
The ending had left me feeling empty and numb for quite some time. Every character in Mishima’s book was desperate and greedy for one thing or the other, as it is in human nature. Life for Sale is a warning that shows what people with their darkest natures are capable of doing to someone who is willing to do it for them, not realizing it doesn’t absolve them of their guilt.
tw: suicide, gore, death, violence
