Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kblincoln 's review for:
The Heartbeat Library
by Laura Imai Messina
Messina is an Italian author who has lived in Japan for a long time with her family. This book is a contemporary literary story mostly about Shuichi, a man who has lived through much grief and returns home to Kamakura to take care of his recently passed mother’s house.
It’s also about the titular location of artist Christian Boltanski‘s Archives du Coeur, an art installation where the heartbeats of people all over the world are recorded and accessible for visitors.
It’s also about enduring unimaginable grief, as well as everyday griefs, and how its people who come in and out of our lives who make it worth living each day.
Told in non-linear style, we hear about Shuichi coming to his mother’s house, only to find out there is a young thief stealing items. Catching the thief starts Shuichi on a journey of dealing with his grief that ends, fittingly, at the Heartbeat Library on Teshima island– a real place.
There are memories of his childhood, memories of the boy’s childhood, mysterious trips to the island in past tense, and throughout it all a philosophical, flowery language that seems very much in line with Japanese literature, but could also be a byproduct of the translation from Italian.
This particular style of slightly abstract writing and allusion tends to make me feel at a distance from the writing– an appreciation of literature as art– as opposed to being immersed in the story and attached to the characters. That is true here. So while I appreciated the book as a work of art, and it evoked feelings, it also evoked an airy sense of immaterialness that wasn’t to my personal reading taste.
Still, as a cultural reference, a literary work, and for the coolness of the Heartbeat Library itself, worth a read. I also recommend for Japanese ex-pat perspective on grief Yuko Taniguchi’s Ocean in the Closet.
It’s also about the titular location of artist Christian Boltanski‘s Archives du Coeur, an art installation where the heartbeats of people all over the world are recorded and accessible for visitors.
It’s also about enduring unimaginable grief, as well as everyday griefs, and how its people who come in and out of our lives who make it worth living each day.
Told in non-linear style, we hear about Shuichi coming to his mother’s house, only to find out there is a young thief stealing items. Catching the thief starts Shuichi on a journey of dealing with his grief that ends, fittingly, at the Heartbeat Library on Teshima island– a real place.
There are memories of his childhood, memories of the boy’s childhood, mysterious trips to the island in past tense, and throughout it all a philosophical, flowery language that seems very much in line with Japanese literature, but could also be a byproduct of the translation from Italian.
This particular style of slightly abstract writing and allusion tends to make me feel at a distance from the writing– an appreciation of literature as art– as opposed to being immersed in the story and attached to the characters. That is true here. So while I appreciated the book as a work of art, and it evoked feelings, it also evoked an airy sense of immaterialness that wasn’t to my personal reading taste.
Still, as a cultural reference, a literary work, and for the coolness of the Heartbeat Library itself, worth a read. I also recommend for Japanese ex-pat perspective on grief Yuko Taniguchi’s Ocean in the Closet.