The Love We Share Without Knowing
In this haunting, richly woven novel of modern life in Japan, the author of the acclaimed debut One for Sorrow explores the ties that bind humanity across the deepest divides. Here is a Murakamiesque jewel box of intertwined narratives in which the lives of several strangers are gently linked...
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In this haunting, richly woven novel of modern life in Japan, the author of the acclaimed debut One for Sorrow explores the ties that bind humanity across the deepest divides. Here is a Murakamiesque jewel box of intertwined narratives in which the lives of several strangers are gently linked through love, loss, and fate. On a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man’s life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives—and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village a disaffected American teenager stranded in a strange land discovers compassion after an encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo a girl named Love learns the deepest lessons about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong.From the neon colors of Tokyo, with its game centers and karaoke bars, to the bamboo groves and hidden shrines of the countryside, these souls and others mingle, revealing a profound tale of connection—uncovering the love we share without knowing. Exquisitely perceptive and deeply affecting, Barzak’s artful storytelling deftly illuminates the inner lives of those attempting to find—or lose—themselves in an often incomprehensible world.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780553385649 (055338564X)
Publish date: November 25th 2008
Publisher: Bantam
Pages no: 304
Edition language: English
Category:
Fantasy,
Science Fiction,
Literature,
Cultural,
Literary Fiction,
Speculative Fiction,
Contemporary,
Asian Literature,
Japan,
Magical Realism,
Short Stories,
Japanese Literature
First off, I have to be honest and say that this book was a bit of a departure from what I normally read, and I knew that thanks to Nymeth's review. One thing I've been trying to do since starting this blog, though, is to branch out and find new authors, genres and subject matter--basically, to grow...
Dear God, what a depressing book. I mean, it was lovely, but just kick me in the gut a couple of times or something because OW. The Love We Share Without Knowing is not technically a novel, although it's been classified as one by some sort of consensus that I was not a part of. The book is compris...
Recommended by Bookmarks magazine. 10 short stories all linked through the various characters, both American and Japanese (primarily) young adults. Bits of spiritual whimsy which I was surprised to see characterized as Science Fiction in Bookmarks. If I had remembered that it was classified such, I...
I have a soft spot for authors who lived and taught in Japan, having spent a year there myself, so this is not an entirely unbiased rating. I guess something in this book resonated with my own feelings and thoughts when I lived there.
This book is filled with so many tiny little beautiful lines, hidden in sad paragraphs. It's hard not to feel depressed after reading this, even though there are bright spots of hope every once in awhile. Every story in this book is interconnected, in the same way a movie like Love, Actually has mul...