"She had a hard time deciding if she should see you too. If she saw you, you would know she was dead. But she said yes... even though she wants to live inside you for ever, even though she wants you to never forget her. She knows that once you see her, you'll forget about her and move on..." [loc. 1732]
Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon, first published as Tsunago ('Go-Between') in Japanese in 2010, could be mistaken for another vaguely magical feelgood novel. The premise is that the Go-Between -- a young man, orphaned, named Ayumi -- can set up a meeting between a living person and a dead person. There are, of course, rules: the dead person must agree to the meeting, and neither party can ever arrange another meeting. The meetings take place at a five-star hotel, from sunset to sunrise on the night of the full moon. ('The more intense the moonlight, the longer they can meet' -- but still, sunset to sunrise...)
The first four chapters, or stories, recount four such meetings. Twenty-something office worker Manami Hirase wants to meet Saori Mizushiro, a recently-deceased celebrity whose off-the-cuff comment helped her with her self-confidence; hard-boiled businessman Yasuhiko Hatade has been given the go-between's contact details by his now-dead mother, and pretends he just wants to ask her about her will; schoolgirl Misa Arashi is desperate to see her dead friend Natsu Misono, for whose death she blames herself; Koichi Tsuchiya mourns the only woman he ever loved, Kirari Himukai, but doesn't know whether she is dead or alive.
Each of the stories goes somewhere unexpected, imparting lessons about expectations, about grief, about guilt. (And yes, they do all get to talk to the dead.) But it's only with the fifth chapter of the book, in which we replay these encounters from Ayumi's viewpoint, that the stories become part of a larger narrative: the story of how Ayumi became an orphan and then a go-between, of the history behind that gift (or is it a curse?), and of Ayumi's relationship with his beloved grandmother. It's a story about family and about loss, about expectations and unspoken assumptions, and about how we deal with grief. Is it selfish to want to speak to the dead? Must we let go of those we loved? Can we forgive them, or ourselves?
The translation was mostly smooth, though there were a couple of points where an explanation of a Japanese term felt laboured: I assume that the nonchronological flow of the stories was the author's own. This was a sweet and thoughtful novel, and I think it would be an interesting book club choice: plenty of material for discussion!
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy! UK publication date is 3rd April 2025.
No comments:
Post a Comment