BOOK 215 • The first novel of the novelist • The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japans devastation in the wake of World War II. • During a visit from her daughter, Niki, Etsuko reflects on her own life as a young woman in Japan, and how she left that country to live in Britain. When Etsuko and her new husband have a daughter, Etsuko wants to call her something modern and her husband wants an Eastern-sounding name, so they compromise with the name Niki, • In Britain, Keiko becomes increasingly solitary and antisocial. Etsuko recalls how, as Keiko grew older, she would lock herself in her room and emerge only to pick up the dinner-plate that her mother would leave for her in the kitchen. This disturbing behavior ends, as the reader already has learned, in Keikos suicide • Etsuko tells her daughter, Niki, that she had a friend in Japan named Sachiko. Sachiko had a daughter named Mariko, a girl whom Etsukos memory paints as exceptionally solitary and antisocial. • Sachiko, Etsuko recalls, had planned to take Mariko to America with an American soldier identified only as Frank. Clearly, Sachikos story bears striking similarities to Etsukos.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 15:26:11 +0000
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