Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

1 review

spookfish's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.75

I was fully transported whilst reading this book, I felt I could see, hear, smell, feel all that was being described. This deep sense of melancholy really sunk into me, but not in an uncomfortable way.
The things Maria describes are experiences I think a lot of people have had, and the writing perfectly captures the emotions of those moments.

Now that spring was drawing near, and each day was warmer than the last, and now we were finally going to leave, all the everyday, nothing-special scenes I was so used to seeing, like the ageing corridors of the inn, and all those swarms of bugs that gathered in the light of the sign out front, and the poles where we hung laundry, where spiders liked to spin their webs and beyond which the mountains jutted up . . . suddenly all of these hit me harder, with greater clarity. The inn seemed bathed in a haze of light.

And it seemed to me that even if you weren't actively letting your emotions ride its surface, the ocean still went on giving you something, teaching you some sort of lesson. Perhaps that was why I had never actually considered its existence before—never really thought about the thundering of the waves as they sweep in endlessly toward the shore. But since I was thinking about it, what on earth did people in the city turn to when they felt the need to reckon with "balance"? Maybe the moon? That seemed like the obvious choice. But then the moon was so small and far away, and something about it felt sort of lonely, and it didn't seem like it would really help . . .

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief and Terminal illness

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Death

Minor: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and Alcohol