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3.5 

Honeybees and Distant Thunder

By Riku Onda & Philip Gabriel
Honeybees and Distant Thunder by Riku Onda & Philip Gabriel digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

THE MILLION-COPY AWARD-WINNING JAPANESE BESTSELLER

Tender and intense, Honeybees and Distant Thunder is the unflinching story of love, courage, and rivalry as three young people come to understand what it means to truly be a friend.


In a small coastal town just a stone's throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three students will experience some of the most joyous—and painful—moments of their lives. Though they don't know it yet, each will profoundly and unpredictably change the others, forever.

Aya was a child prodigy who abruptly gave up performing after the death of her mother, and is now trying for a comeback; Masaru, a childhood friend of Aya who came to the piano through her insistence that he learn to play, is now reunited with her after many years, and is equally invested in both his and her success; Akashi, who is older and married, works in a music store and is the “old man” of the competitors, hoping for a final chance at success; and Jin, a sixteen-year-old prodigy, the free spirited son of a beekeeper who travels constantly, and has no formal training (and doesn’t even own a piano) yet whose mesmerizing insight into music has brought him to the attention of one of the world’s most celebrated pianists, the late Maestro Von Hoffman.

Each of them will break the rules, awe their fans and push themselves to the brink. But at what cost?

Beloved in Japan, Riku Onda immerses us in the world of music—from piano masterpieces to the buzz of bees and the rumble of thunder—which crescendos to a surprising ending in this rich and vibrant novel.

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138 Reviews

3.5
Slightly Smiling Face“Jin is an enigmatic young pianist with overflowing potential and an usual background, whose late mentor has thrown into the exclusive world of classical piano; Aya was a child prodigy who disappeared from the piano scene after her mother’s death; Akashi is a young father, working a regular job with a regular family, who had once been involved in the piano scene; and finally, Masaru is Aya’s childhood friend and now a star musician at Juilliard. In HONEYBEES AND DISTANT THUNDER, the piano competition at Yoshigae will bring these four individuals together and change them irrevocably as they vie for another round at performing. I picked up this book because both the premise of the piano competition and a bit of Aya’s background reminded me of Your Lie in April and its main character, Arima Kousei. This novel turned out to be far less tragic, but both stories brim with a love for both music and human connection, and how they may influence each other. Another similarity is the way both narratives show us other characters reacting to the performances through images or stories that the music conjures up, vivid scenes and details, that I can’t conceive of myself, but it was interesting to see that it wasn’t specific to Your Lie in April for the sake of the visual art. I have zero background in music, let alone the piano, and all the classical titles and musical language are unfamiliar terrain to me, but I enjoyed reading this all the same. Since this book stretches over the duration of a single (if intense) piano competition, it may feel tedious at times, but personally, I was a big fan of the affirmation of art and artists (music and musicians specifically in this case), while also acknowledging the exclusive opportunities and potential homogeneity of its gatekeepers/judges in deciding what is “acceptable” or “good” about a performance. Music, Jin’s late mentor tells him, was once everywhere, and now it has been locked behind exclusivity—and it should be the task of the musician to bring it back and share it with the wider world. I’d like to think the same can be said about stories. I would love to see an anime adaptation of this.”

About Riku Onda

Riku Onda is a No.1 bestselling author in Japan. She grew up in Sendai and attended Waseda University, where she played the alto saxophone. In 1991, Onda won an award with her first novel, and became a full-time writer. In 2003 she moved to South America, where she reported for NHK television on Mayan and Incan culture. As her father was a music enthusiast, Onda grew up listening to classical music and played the piano from an early age, before discovering Western rock and jazz. Honeybees and Distant Thunder was the most celebrated novel of the year when it first published in Japan, winning two major literary awards: the Japan Booksellers Prize and the Naoki Prize (no other novel has won both in the same year). In 2019, it was made into a major Japanese film.

Philip Gabriel

Philip Gabriel, Professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Studies, the University of Arizona. He has translated many novels and short stories by the writer Haruki Murakami and other modern writers. He is recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2001) for his translation of Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.

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