TUGUMI
Author: 吉本ばなな (Yoshimoto Banana)
Summary
Japanese
病弱で生意気な美少女つぐみ。彼女と姉妹のように育った海辺の小さな町に帰省した私は、まだ淡い夜の始まりに、つぐみとともにふるさとの最後のひと夏を過ごす少年に出会った――。少女から大人へと移りゆく季節の、二度とかえらないきらめきを描く、切なく透明な物語。第二回山本周五郎賞受賞作。
English
Tsugumi is a sickly but feisty and somewhat unpleasant young girl living in a small Japanese seaside town at the family inn with her parents, sister Yoko, aunt Masako, and cousin Maria (the protagonist). Following the divorce of Maria’s father, Maria and Masako move to Tokyo to be with him, where Maria attends university. Shortly after the move, Maria receives a call from Tsugumi to say that the family are selling the inn. Maria returns to the town for one last summer to remember her childhood and reconcile her strained relationship with Tsugumi while she still can. But then they didn’t realize the true display of true will.
(taken from Wikipedia)
Availability
Personal Opinion
We read another book of this author, “Kitchen”, a while ago in this book club, and I thought it might be about time to try some more of her writing. I was a bit torn between this book, which contains one long story, and another one (called とかげ), which contains 6 short stories. In the end I thought that it might be nicer for the book club to have an ongoing story, so it might be easier to settle into the narrative and discuss the ongoing events etc. If we pick and like this one, I might end up nominating the other one at a later point in time 
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- We already read a book by the same author (“Kitchen”), and it was quite well-received
- Not too long at 245 pages.
- Won the Yamamoto Shuugorou Prize (which is awarded annually to a new work of fiction considered to exemplify the art of storytelling) in 1989
- Available in English as “Goodbye Tsugumi”
Cons
- When reading Kitchen, I sometimes found the author’s way of writing to be a bit vague and thus slightly more difficult to understand than a straightforward narrative.
Pictures
Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?
- No effort at all
- Minimal effort
- Moderate effort
- Significant effort
- So much effort my head might explode
- I don’t know
0 voters