Every story should have an animal, I think, after reading Hiroko Oyamada’s novel, The Hole. A woman, Asa, is walking in the extreme heat of a cicada-sung Japanese summer, making her way to a 7-11 to take care of a banal but urgent errand for her mother-in-law, when she sees a creature. Not a dog, not a raccoon, not a rabbit, not a weasel. It has black fur and proportions that don’t make sense. Asa follows as the animal turns towards a nearby river (river of strange smells). She doesn’t quite know why she keeps going, but she does. The animal seems, perhaps, like a guide. Suddenly, Asa has fallen into a hole. She lands on her feet, unhurt, but temporarily trapped. Maybe the animal is in there with her, down by her shoes. It’s not a rabbit, but she’s an Alice. After the day when she followed the animal, nothing in the story is ever quite itself. There are relatives, neighbors, jobs, meals, a death. Is this one a dream? Is that one a ghost? The animal she followed, like any animal, is a mystery. The creature itself is a kind of hole to fall into, the way life is.