3.5
Manazuru
ByPublisher Description
Startlingly restless and immaculately compact, Manazuru paints the portrait of a woman on the brink of her own memories and future.
Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three–year–old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man—the antithesis of Rei—has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a moment in time she can never quite locate. Her time there by the water encompasses years of unsteady footing and a developing urgency to find something.
Through a poetic style embracing the surreal and grotesque, a quiet tenderness emerges from these dark moments. Manazuru is a meditation on memory—a profound, precisely delineated exploration of the relationships between lovers and family members.
Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three–year–old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man—the antithesis of Rei—has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a moment in time she can never quite locate. Her time there by the water encompasses years of unsteady footing and a developing urgency to find something.
Through a poetic style embracing the surreal and grotesque, a quiet tenderness emerges from these dark moments. Manazuru is a meditation on memory—a profound, precisely delineated exploration of the relationships between lovers and family members.
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3.5
Lauren
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dominika
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Gosia
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Laura
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tinycl0ud
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“「恋愛をして結婚してしあわせに暮らして子供がうまれました。うまれてからも失踪するまではしあわせでした。はじめにそう話すのがまっとうだと思ったけれど、しなかった。」
"Only Momo can wound me like this. She is merciless. She presses, unconcerned, into the softest places. Ignorant of the oozing pus, the scars. Because with her, I can reveal only the softness. The parts of me I ought to cover, crust over, protect. I remember how, very long ago, she was of my body, and I am unable to raise a barrier, rebuff.”
This older translated novel is quite unlike her more recently translated works. I think what surprised me most was how it's a ghost story. The narrative is slow, meandering, meditative, and seems to go around in circles. I found it helpful to have the original text on hand to refer to, especially for understanding how the dialogue is supposed to sound like when the protagonist, Kei, is talking to her teenage daughter.
Kei's husband disappeared many years ago but her heart is still fixated on him. For a guy who isn't even around, recollections of the time they spent together dominates most of the narrative. And yet, there is also a sense that she's concealing something from herself. The rest of the time, she thinks about her daughter and laments how distant she's been recently. Kei finds herself repeatedly drawn to a seaside town, Manazuru, where she meets a ghost from a past age. Will she risk abandoning her beloved daughter to chase after the past?”
About Hiromi Kawakami
Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first book, God (Kamisama) was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for Tread on a Snake (Hebi o fumu), and in 2001 she won the Tanizaki Prize for her novel Strange Weather in Tokyo (Sensei no kaban), which was an international bestseller. The book was short-listed for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 International Foreign Fiction Prize.
Allison Markin Powell is a translator, editor, and publishing consultant. In addition to Hiromi Kawakami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo, The Nakano Thrift Shop, and The Ten Loves of Nishino, she has translated books by Osamu Dazai and Fuminori Nakamura, and her work has appeared in Words Without Borders and Granta, among other publications. She maintains the database japaneseliteratureinenglish.com.
Allison Markin Powell is a translator, editor, and publishing consultant. In addition to Hiromi Kawakami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo, The Nakano Thrift Shop, and The Ten Loves of Nishino, she has translated books by Osamu Dazai and Fuminori Nakamura, and her work has appeared in Words Without Borders and Granta, among other publications. She maintains the database japaneseliteratureinenglish.com.
Other books by Hiromi Kawakami
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