cherry blossom season
Heya friends,
Cherry blossom season is in full swing here, which means it’s the perfect time to run around the cherry blossoms and pretend you’re an anime high school student. And after you’re done, you can curl up with one of these thought-provoking books I’ve read recently. 🌸
The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, translated by Takami Nieda (Soho Teen, April 2022)
Thanks NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for a review.
The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart came to my attention because it was shortlisted for or won a number of awards in Japan (won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers and was shortlisted for the Akutagawa Prize, among other honors). This is a novella about Ginny Park, a high school student from Tokyo living in Oregon who goes on a road trip with Stephanie, the picture book author who took her in after she was expelled from her last school. Soho’s marketing for this book compares it to Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street, which is pretty accurate. Ginny’s story of why she had to leave Japan intersects with real-world historical events that give more color to the background to Pachinko, the epic three-generation saga of a Korean family in Japan. (Pachinko is getting a drama adaptation soon, and I’m excited since it’s an international production with Korean, Japanese, and American actors and crew. Fingers crossed they don’t mess it up.)
Takami Nieda is a Japanese American translator who focuses on the work of writers of Korean heritage who write in Japanese. Her translation is smooth and gives this novella a literary feel. The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart is really a character portrait of Ginny, and even though she’s young, I’m not sure I’d recommend it to YA fans. The main appeal is the historical perspective, and the language lacks the immediacy of a lot of current YA and has a slower style more reminiscent of adult fiction. (Though technically The Giver by Lois Lowry is YA and is also fairly slow, so I guess this could work.)
I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg
I think I Came All This Way to Meet You might be the first memoir I’ve written about for this blog. I’ve been following author Jami Attenberg’s substack for the last few years, and she seems like she’s led an interesting life, so I decided to check out her new book once it showed up at the library.
I don’t read memoirs often, but Attenberg makes use of a variety of techniques mostly found in fiction. This memoir is written in a non-linear way with each chapter jumping back and forth between time and with short, novel-like chapters. She has indeed led an interesting life—Attenberg puts a new spin on the Wandering Bohemian Artist archetype because of her inability to hold down a stable job or stay in a single place, until she decided to move to New Orleans after visiting for a funeral. Her thoughts about being a single woman at fifty who has never wanted kids particularly resonated because those voices are often overshadowed by stories conforming to society’s preference of having everyone go up the relationship escalator. Her prose is very smooth and she’s led a fascinating life—if you want real life stories with happy-ish endings, this is a good one.
Short Story of the Month:
“Proof by Induction” by José Pablo Iriarte:
A sad but moving story about math and parents. Will make you want to call your mom or dad and freak them out by being sappy.
Other Noteworthy Stories/Books/Shows:
The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier:
Think philosophical take on a question every 10 year old has asked themselves and the weirdness of 2020 mashed up into one very French speculative thriller novel. This novel was originally written in French, but the English translation was full of zingers and one-liners—if you told me it had been written in English originally, I would have believed you. I’m still thinking about the ending, so if you read it and are as intrigued as I am, hit me up!
“Super. Hero.” by Karen Brenchley
This flash fiction does a lot in under a thousand words and makes great use of superhero tropes. The author’s comments about how a male author did not find this story believable are a great example as to why the world needs diverse perspectives telling stories.
Queer Eye Germany
Prepare your tissues, because a new German Fab Five is back to make even the most hardened souls cry. The heroes of each episode are all people you want to root for, and this is a great binge watch if you are like me and have seen pretty much all the other seasons of Queer Eye. It did take an episode to get used to the new Fab Five—Jonathan Van Ness has such a huge presence in regular Queer Eye (did y’all catch my horrible oxymoron?). But this is feelgood TV at its best.
That’s all for now. See you guys in April!
tina