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A review by milesjmoran
Farewell, My Orange by Iwaki Kei
4.0
But the cultivation of the written word, the language that sustains thought, is an individual matter, a thing that endlessly changes as it’s propagated inside each person’s head. It’s like planting seeds of language deep inside the heart. It’s simple when you’re young, but with the passing years it can get difficult to dig into the hardened earth. I’m neither young nor very old yet, and my hope is that I can use not only the visual input of reading but the output of writing, however clumsy, till one day a whole forest of language has grown into the soil of my heart.
4.5
Farewell, My Orange is a tender, moving look at friendship, culture, language, and belonging. In a small town in Australia, two women meet at their English language class, one who moved from Japan seven years prior with her husband and baby, the other more recently from Africa who was abandoned by her husband shortly after arriving and left to raise their two sons by herself. Their relationship is explored in a realistic way; they don't immediately become inseparable, and it's mostly in hindsight that they realise how important they were to one another in their times of difficulty. Kei handles the subject of racism brilliantly without permitting it to take centre stage and overshadow her characters - it affects them, it's something they know is going on around them but they thrive anyway, taking pride in their identity and their own story.
I could've easily read another 100 or so pages of this book...I didn't really want it to end. The only reason it's not 5 stars is that I felt like there needed to be a little bit more. The pacing near the end was slightly rushed, in my opinion, and I wanted Kei to slow down a little and let the characters exist for a while longer.
4.5
Farewell, My Orange is a tender, moving look at friendship, culture, language, and belonging. In a small town in Australia, two women meet at their English language class, one who moved from Japan seven years prior with her husband and baby, the other more recently from Africa who was abandoned by her husband shortly after arriving and left to raise their two sons by herself. Their relationship is explored in a realistic way; they don't immediately become inseparable, and it's mostly in hindsight that they realise how important they were to one another in their times of difficulty. Kei handles the subject of racism brilliantly without permitting it to take centre stage and overshadow her characters - it affects them, it's something they know is going on around them but they thrive anyway, taking pride in their identity and their own story.
I could've easily read another 100 or so pages of this book...I didn't really want it to end. The only reason it's not 5 stars is that I felt like there needed to be a little bit more. The pacing near the end was slightly rushed, in my opinion, and I wanted Kei to slow down a little and let the characters exist for a while longer.