Clarissa Goenawan follows that formula to a T. I do like Murakami, but I have to admit there's a certain formula to his novels. My main problem with this book is that I've read it before, but it was called The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle then. But where the novels I just cited each have their own voice, their own distinctive characters, their own intriguing stories to tell, Rainbirds just. If We Were Villains is like The Secret History The Book Collector is like Rebecca. Writers are influenced by other writers, this is how art has always been created. Look, I don't usually mind when the influence of another author is clearly present in a novel. It's also the most derivative book I've ever read. Rainbirds by Haruki Murakami - sorry, Clarissa Goenawan - is about a man who attempts to investigate the murder of his sister by traveling to her home in Akakawa. Thought this was quite well done, and the cover is gorgeous as well. Learning something too about the differences in cultures and mores. I enjoyed this, although I like many different kinds of writing, it is nice to read something a little different. As he tries to put everything together, it will lead back to revelations in his own family.Ren himself will find himself sorely tested when one of his students tries to take her crush on him too far. This is a very tightly controlled story, but not one without some ominious and surprising happenings. Living in the same place, taking a temporary job teaching at the school she taught. Putting everything else on hold, he travels to the town where she had been living, where he finds once again he is following his sisters footsteps. Ren is a young man who is basically following in his elder sisters footsteps, almost done with his degree when his sister is murdered. The unemotional tone to the writing, for another, yet one can feel the emotions brimming under a veneer of formal manners and respectability. The spare writing for one, not that there are no descriptions, but only as much as the reader needs to know for the story, no words wasted. Haunted in his dreams by a young girl who is desperately trying to tell him something, Ren struggles to find solace in the void his sister has left behind.ģ.5 There is something so distinctive about Japanese novels. Ren heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister's affairs, still failing to understand why she chose to abandon the family and Tokyo for this desolate town years ago.īut Ren soon finds himself picking up where Keiko left off, accepting both her teaching position at a local cram school and the bizarre arrangement of free lodging at a wealthy politician’s mansion in exchange for reading to the man’s catatonic wife.Īs he comes to know the figures in Akakawa, from the enigmatic politician to his fellow teachers and a rebellious, alluring student named Rio, Ren delves into his shared childhood with Keiko and what followed, trying to piece together what happened the night of her death. She was viciously stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Ren Ishida is nearly finished with graduate school when he receives news of his sister Keiko's sudden death. Clarissa Goenawan’s dark, spellbinding literary debut opens with a murder and shines a spotlight onto life in fictional small-town Japan.
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