If you want to know how cool author Haruki Murakami is, just know that Patti Smith decided to write a review of this book in the New York Times. That is how cool he is. The novel centers on Tsukuru Tazaki. He’s a train station designer in his mid-30s. Tsukuru lives alone in Tokyo, although he was raised in Nagoya. He has a quiet life that, by objective standards, is going quite well. He got into a difficult engineering program (mission accomplished). He is fulfilling […]
A Non-Western Immigration Story
Buzzfeed actually had a semi useful quiz a few weeks ago along the lines of, “answer these questions, and we’ll recommend a book.” My result was Pachinko so when I saw it prominently displayed at Barnes and Noble, I figured it meant I should go ahead and get it. Pachinko is one of those books that is always harder to review because while very well done, as a multi-generational family drama, there is a certain amount of familiarity to the general strokes of the story. “Poor […]
What would you do if you knew who was responsible for the death of your child?
Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder A little girl is dead. Her mom knows who killed her. She wants revenge. It sounds like a simple enough plot, what could be more straightforward and relatable than a broken-hearted mother wanting to punish those responsible for the death of her child? But this is not a simple story. As the story starts, Moriguchi, a middle school teacher, is telling her students that she is retiring from teaching. Moriguchi has recently lost her 4-year-old daughter, Manami. She […]
We were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve.
Well, this was a lovely discovery! Kitchen was in a stack of books given to me very randomly by a friend who moved away a couple of years ago and did a big purge. She has great taste, but also loves to buy books, so I’m finding it all a little hit and miss. I wish I had picked this up the day my friend gave it to me. It is incredibly, beautifully written, so also I must give due credit to the translator, because […]