قصة الكتاب :
Kōdansha, 2013. 329 pp. ¥1,500. ISBN 978-4-06-218365-9.
Tsujimura Mizuki
Born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1980. Received the Mephisto
Award in 2004 for her debut Tsumetai kōsha no toki wa tomaru [Time
Stops in the Cold School Building]. Further received the Yoshikawa
Eiji Prize for New Writers for Tsunagu [Link], which was later made
into a film, and the Naoki Prize for Kagi no nai yume o miru [Dreams
Without Keys], which was made into a television drama. Other
works include Kōri no kujira [Frozen Whale], Boku no mejā supūn
[My Measuring Spoon], and Surō Haitsu no kamisama [The God of
Slow Heights].

Akari, Kinuka, Genki, and Arata are high school students living on Saejima, a
fictitious island in the Seto Inland Sea. Cut off from the mainland, tiny Saejima
has no high school of its own, and the four teenagers must board a ferry every day
to travel to a school on the mainland.
The novel depicts the inner lives of these young people during the emotional
upheaval of adolescence. At the same time, it reveals the daily lives of the people
around them through their eyes, creating a kind of tableau of provincial life.
The youngsters are islanders, intimately familiar with the small village where
they grew up. At the same time, they spend most days in school on the mainland,
which gives them a double perspective. This mobile, “in between” point of view
makes them particularly astute in their observations of emigrés who have escaped
the confines of the island and settled on the mainland.
The novel is meticulously constructed, with remarkable attention to detail. The
stories of the individual characters stand alone but appear to the reader not as
unrelated fragments but as threads woven together into a single tapestry.
Perhaps the novel’s greatest strength is its gentle, rhythmic language. Tsujimura’s
subtle writing conveys both the tranquility of provincial life and the feeling
of suffocation young people can experience in rural communities, especially on a
remote island. With its unusual setting for a contemporary coming-of-age novel,
Tsujimura’s book makes skillful use of literary techniques carefully attuned to the
tastes of the urban reader. (CK)