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A review by kerryvaughan
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
4.0
“What’s punishable mean?”
17. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Noboru, a smart, troubled 13-year-old boy obsessed with ships, watches his widowed mother go to bed with a manly, worldly sailor through a peephole between their bedroom walls.
Thus begins Noboru’s hero-worship of the sailor Ryuji. But Noboru is as troublesome as he is troubled, running with a gang of kids who think they have life all figured out, and that adults do not, and that violence abounds.
Much like a roiling sea swayed by the wind, Noboru’s passion for Ryuji swells in every direction, ultimately swirling into hatred as Ryuji chooses marriage over the sea, and Noboru chooses contempt over consolation.
For me, this was a slow burn (I went through phases of not liking it) but it paid off. The longer the coal sits in my stomach, the more it sears. Good stuff. I think Mishima, and maybe most Japanese literature, is like this. Sparse and muted and stealthy. #2025books.
17. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Noboru, a smart, troubled 13-year-old boy obsessed with ships, watches his widowed mother go to bed with a manly, worldly sailor through a peephole between their bedroom walls.
Thus begins Noboru’s hero-worship of the sailor Ryuji. But Noboru is as troublesome as he is troubled, running with a gang of kids who think they have life all figured out, and that adults do not, and that violence abounds.
Much like a roiling sea swayed by the wind, Noboru’s passion for Ryuji swells in every direction, ultimately swirling into hatred as Ryuji chooses marriage over the sea, and Noboru chooses contempt over consolation.
For me, this was a slow burn (I went through phases of not liking it) but it paid off. The longer the coal sits in my stomach, the more it sears. Good stuff. I think Mishima, and maybe most Japanese literature, is like this. Sparse and muted and stealthy. #2025books.