This was a book someone recommended in a casual conversation. I picked it up in a bookstore and couldn't put it down. Nao, the teenage Japanese narrator, a self-described "time being," is sitting in a cafe in Tokyo's Electricity Town. She writes in her Hello Kitty journal, pouring out her soul to a reader she'll never meet, and her voice leaps into life. But why is this child contemplating suicide in a manga themed Tokyo cafe called Fifi's Lonely Apron?
This is only the first thorny question raised by the author, who appears later in the novel as a second narrator. A thicket of questions about history, ecology, society, time and existence move the book compellingly forward.
After the tsunami of 2011, can Nao, the girl whose journal washed up on a BC beach, possibly be alive? Will her Uncle Haruki, a philosophy student and unwilling kamikaze pilot of World War II, really carry out the suicide mission, or will he ditch his plane in the Pacific?
Will Nao's depressed father succeed in his next suicide attempt? Why does he want to kill himself and abandon his daughter to her fate? Will Nao survive the bullying at school? When, against her will, she is sent to a remote Zen monastery for the summer, will her great grandmother, age 104, be able to help this deeply troubled teen to navigate the swirling waters of her out-of-control life?
These were just a few of the questions that kept me reading through this highly unusual work. When I wondered how this terrifying tale could possibly end without spiraling down into tragedy, I flipped to the jacket image of Ruth Ozeki for encouragement.
One look at the shining face of the author, a filmmaker and Zen priest as well as an erudite scholar with a crazy sense of humour, persuaded me to keep going. It was well worth the ride.
Published in 2013 by Viking (Toronto), this novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
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