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lene_kretzsch's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
honeybeeleereviews's review against another edition
3.0
Rating 3 ⭐️ I was lucky enough to win this book from a @goodreads giveaway. It’s about a small village on the Japanese coast. The local police chief plays audience to the locals who come to him with bottles of wine as they share tales of the village. While this is going on the police chief’s daughter is listening in on all the tales and piecing together all the tales of violence, dangerous attempt to save Korean refugees from the Japanese police. This was a short read that I am going to have to reread. I don’t think I was in the right head space while reading this. I didn’t focus enough to get the names of the characters straight and I kept mixing them up as I read. I will defiantly give this book another read.
rowansandvig's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
asherl's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
abookishtype's review against another edition
3.0
To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, all happy villages are alike and all unhappy villages are unhappy in their one way. At least, this is the impression I got as I read Masatsugu Ono’s Echo on the Bay (solidly translated by Angus Turvill). When Miki and her family arrive in Oita after her father’s transfer, the family expects a quiet life in the coastal village. After all, why would they send a man who cannot pass the promotion exams to be the top police officer in Oita?
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
dreesreads's review against another edition
4.0
A new police chief has brought his family to a small Japanese town. There is a local election going on, a ghost ship sits in the bay, and his daughter Miki (the narrator) eavesdrops on every conversation between her father and the townspeople that she can.
Both Miki and her father learn why the town drunk is a drunk--and why his elderly father is always ready to take him home. They learn why the two businessmen (running against each other in the local election, and brothers-in-law) hate each other. Why kids shoot bottle rockets and an elderly lady's home. They learn why others might behave as they do--and why it is largely forgiven. They find out about the shameful things that occurred in the past. And they are actively participating in what future generations will consider shameful...
Both Miki and her father learn why the town drunk is a drunk--and why his elderly father is always ready to take him home. They learn why the two businessmen (running against each other in the local election, and brothers-in-law) hate each other. Why kids shoot bottle rockets and an elderly lady's home. They learn why others might behave as they do--and why it is largely forgiven. They find out about the shameful things that occurred in the past. And they are actively participating in what future generations will consider shameful...
lekg's review
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
arirang's review
4.0
Dad had a lot of things bothering him when he was stationed on the coast.
There was the abandoned boat floating in the bay. There was the body that Mitsugu Azamui said was on the beach, but which nobody ever found. There were the boys who kept shooting bottle rockets at old Toshiko-ba’s house. And then there was me, in love with Mr. Yoshida, my social studies teacher.
Echo on the Bay is the second novel in translation from Ono Masatsugu, after the excellent Lion Cross Point (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2279466161), both translated by Angus Turvill and published by perhaps the US’s finest independent publisher Two Lines Press.
The original of this novel にぎやかな湾に背負われた船 (Nigiyakana wan ni seowareta fune) won the Mishima Yukio Prize (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishima_Yukio_Prize) in 2002.
I described Lion Cross Point in my review as a “powerful novel(la), deceptively simple but artfully constructed and very unsettling” and praised how Turvill “does an effective job of rendering the local dialect of the characters into a generic English-language unsophisticated dialect”, and the same comments also apply here.
Echo on the Bay is set in a coastal fishing town. It is narrated by Miki, a teenage girl, whose father has been sent to the area to be the local policeman. The locals are a rather eccentric bunch, prone to talking and drinking. As the quote that opens my review suggests, there are a number of odd issues in the village, troubling Miki and her father, but finding out the stories that lie behind them is a tortuous business due to the elliptical ways the locals speak:
A Western ethnologist described the frustration people of his profession feel when they can’t get the information they’re looking for. I was beginning to feel that frustration myself. Just when you think your informants are about to tell you something they go off on a tangent, recounting anecdotes of no direct relevance whatsoever. And not just that. When they’re talking other people come along and join in. The flow of the conversation is taken off in a completely different direction. The ethnologists begin to think that their sincere attempts to discover truth about a society and culture and being deliberately obstructed.
“But that’s not the case,” said the ethnologist, whose research focused on a tribal society somewhere on the Upper Nile. “For them, it’s the normal way of talking about the subject. We may think they’re digressing, but in their minds they aren’t at all.”
For the reader, there is an additional layer of obfuscation due to Miki’s own curious choice of metaphors. For example, in the passage below she describes the local drunkard, around who many of the stories revolve, Mitsugu Azamui (always referred to in that Western style by the villagers, instead of the more usual Azamui Mitsugu with the family name first, due to an incident from the 1940s when American soldiers and Mitsugu was a child).
There was a large bottle in his hand, like a scepter- the only thing that was faithful to this solitary king. The liquid was pure, transparent – reflecting the scepter’s fidelity. But was it really pure? It was difficult to tell in the moonlight. The king was suspicious and, wanting to establish its true motivations, kept lifting it to his eye and looking deep within. Then he’d press it to his lips, as if the fidelity would be revealed by the pleasure the liquid gave as it ran down his throat.
But as Miki and the reader untangles the tales, a dark picture emerges that reveals much of Japan’s own past, embracing the invasion of Manchuria, colonial repression and the forced importation of indentured labour from Korea.
Ono is one of the leading Japanese novelists of the 'post-Murakami' generation (a label he accepts) and also a prolific translator of novels from French into Japanese, notably of another author Two Lines Press feature in English translation, the brilliant [a:Marie NDiaye|249543|Marie NDiaye|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1474445581p2/249543.jpg], which likely influences his own style. In a fascinating Paris Review article, he discussed [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1539035376p2/3354.jpg] and [a:Kenzaburō Ōe|3439713|Kenzaburō Ōe|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1328701262p2/3439713.jpg], two writers often regarded by some Japanese critics as writing in ‘translationese’ as well as his own style, focusing on this novel:
There was the abandoned boat floating in the bay. There was the body that Mitsugu Azamui said was on the beach, but which nobody ever found. There were the boys who kept shooting bottle rockets at old Toshiko-ba’s house. And then there was me, in love with Mr. Yoshida, my social studies teacher.
Echo on the Bay is the second novel in translation from Ono Masatsugu, after the excellent Lion Cross Point (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2279466161), both translated by Angus Turvill and published by perhaps the US’s finest independent publisher Two Lines Press.
The original of this novel にぎやかな湾に背負われた船 (Nigiyakana wan ni seowareta fune) won the Mishima Yukio Prize (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishima_Yukio_Prize) in 2002.
I described Lion Cross Point in my review as a “powerful novel(la), deceptively simple but artfully constructed and very unsettling” and praised how Turvill “does an effective job of rendering the local dialect of the characters into a generic English-language unsophisticated dialect”, and the same comments also apply here.
Echo on the Bay is set in a coastal fishing town. It is narrated by Miki, a teenage girl, whose father has been sent to the area to be the local policeman. The locals are a rather eccentric bunch, prone to talking and drinking. As the quote that opens my review suggests, there are a number of odd issues in the village, troubling Miki and her father, but finding out the stories that lie behind them is a tortuous business due to the elliptical ways the locals speak:
A Western ethnologist described the frustration people of his profession feel when they can’t get the information they’re looking for. I was beginning to feel that frustration myself. Just when you think your informants are about to tell you something they go off on a tangent, recounting anecdotes of no direct relevance whatsoever. And not just that. When they’re talking other people come along and join in. The flow of the conversation is taken off in a completely different direction. The ethnologists begin to think that their sincere attempts to discover truth about a society and culture and being deliberately obstructed.
“But that’s not the case,” said the ethnologist, whose research focused on a tribal society somewhere on the Upper Nile. “For them, it’s the normal way of talking about the subject. We may think they’re digressing, but in their minds they aren’t at all.”
For the reader, there is an additional layer of obfuscation due to Miki’s own curious choice of metaphors. For example, in the passage below she describes the local drunkard, around who many of the stories revolve, Mitsugu Azamui (always referred to in that Western style by the villagers, instead of the more usual Azamui Mitsugu with the family name first, due to an incident from the 1940s when American soldiers and Mitsugu was a child).
There was a large bottle in his hand, like a scepter- the only thing that was faithful to this solitary king. The liquid was pure, transparent – reflecting the scepter’s fidelity. But was it really pure? It was difficult to tell in the moonlight. The king was suspicious and, wanting to establish its true motivations, kept lifting it to his eye and looking deep within. Then he’d press it to his lips, as if the fidelity would be revealed by the pleasure the liquid gave as it ran down his throat.
But as Miki and the reader untangles the tales, a dark picture emerges that reveals much of Japan’s own past, embracing the invasion of Manchuria, colonial repression and the forced importation of indentured labour from Korea.
Ono is one of the leading Japanese novelists of the 'post-Murakami' generation (a label he accepts) and also a prolific translator of novels from French into Japanese, notably of another author Two Lines Press feature in English translation, the brilliant [a:Marie NDiaye|249543|Marie NDiaye|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1474445581p2/249543.jpg], which likely influences his own style. In a fascinating Paris Review article, he discussed [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1539035376p2/3354.jpg] and [a:Kenzaburō Ōe|3439713|Kenzaburō Ōe|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1328701262p2/3439713.jpg], two writers often regarded by some Japanese critics as writing in ‘translationese’ as well as his own style, focusing on this novel:
I don’t think anyone would object if I said Ōe and Murakami are the two novelists that represent contemporary Japanese literature from the end of the war through the present. Is it surprising that reading foreign literature in the original played a crucial role in their literary development? They are always writing through the experience of the “foreign.” As Proust said: “les beaux livres sont écrits dans une sorte de langeue étrangère (beautiful books are written in a kind of foreign language).” Even if Oe and Murakami seem to be writing in Japanese, they might truly be writing in some kind of foreign language.
It was there, in Orléans, that I began to translate into Japanese Foucault, Glissant, Naipaul, and Marie NDiaye. I feel now that without this effect of distance—geographical distance from my hometown and linguistic distance made possible by it, as well as the in-between space opened up by the act of translation—I couldn’t have written my novel. This distance made it possible for me to see the place and people of my native land in such a vivid way that wouldn’t have been possible if I had been in Tokyo. I am convinced that, like in Murakami and Oe’s work, the in-between space of translation and complete detachment from Japanese helped me to be more sensitive to the language than when I was surrounded by it—or perhaps it allowed me to find my own kind of foreign language.
from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/06/23/on-translationese/
Recommended – 4.5 stars
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