Frank
Hello, this is Frank.
I’d like to share my thoughts on this short story collection by quoting a rather insightful review from the end of the book.
“The sky I looked up at was dazzling. But the low November sunlight wasn’t harsh on the eyes, and I kept lying there, gazing at the clear sky beyond the windowpane…”
This story begins with such a gentle opening. On the very first page, we get this moment:
“What are you doing?” Yayoi suddenly peeked in front of me.
“I was watching the sky,” I replied.
Here’s the twist: “I” am speaking with Yayoi, who is actually my wife Masumi’s daughter from a previous marriage. Masumi doesn’t hide her displeasure—how long are we going to keep talking so formally? But both I and Yayoi feel this way of speaking suits us just fine.
The drama kicks off when a man and a boy, around Yayoi’s age, come to our house one Sunday afternoon while Masumi is out. The man wants Yayoi to apologize—she had punched his son. She does apologize, but after they leave, I hear Yayoi’s real reason for hitting the boy. Her explanation shocks me—and infuriates me.
The conversations between “I” and Yayoi are masterfully written. The violence is expressed in a way that doesn’t feel violent, which feels like the work of a writer in their forties—subtle, reflective, mature. Personally, I’d probably go too far with gritty realism.
Later, another teary-eyed boy shows up. As we talk to him, we start to connect the dots between Masumi’s absence and the father of the first boy having vanished. A thread of unease begins to tug at us. And so, Yayoi and I head to an amusement park—
The soft, almost tender atmosphere that runs throughout the story is what gives it such charm. The distance between “I” and Yayoi is perfectly balanced and quietly moving. While I personally gravitate toward stories packed with dramatic highs and lows, I still admire the author’s ability to turn the “ordinary” into something quietly literary and compelling.
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