BOOK REVIEW:
Title:The Woman, the Boy, and the Whale
Author: Sonoko Machida (translation by Sam Bett)
Publisher: Putnam’s Sons, New York
Copyright 2027 by XX
Star Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
The story is about Ms. Michima (Kiko), whose failure to stand up for herself and speak her mind to her horribly abusive mother and stepfather results in her meeting An, who saves her and loves her. However, his failure to stand up for himself and speak his mind to Kiko results in a catastrophic collision of expectations, most of which are An’s. You might call the whole story a calamity of misdirected energy with a twist of child abuse, a teaspoon of tragedy, and a sprinkle of hope.
My #1 wish for this story would be for Machida to show me, or at least tell me, why Kiko lets herself become snarled by Chikara, why she doesn’t see him as the flimsy character he is; and conversely, she fails to explain why An cannot or does not express himself in a meaningful way that might bring about a warmer relationship with Kiko, which he obviously wants to have.
This seems to be the story about all the things the characters do not or cannot say. It’s an exploration into a kind of twilight zone of dysfunctional relationships. A kind of bizarro world that’s perhaps like the world of the 52-hertz whale which sings in the darkness of the sea only to have no other whales hear it.
As I grew deeper into this story, I began to wonder why Machida doesn’t reveal her character Kiko’s deeper sensibility and bring us closer to the edge of something that is frightening, which really is at the heart of her 52-hertz conundrum, leaving us with the eternal question of whether or not we can hear ourselves. If this book wasn’t already well put to bed and already a fine-selling novel in Japan, I’d suggest Machida push deeper into Ms. Mishima to see what ironies might be hiding within her, what is it really that causes her such regret over An?
But of course, this sort of thing usually rides on the back of a fragile nuance and could have been lost in the translation. So I push up the star rating from four to five stars, simply giving it the benefit of the doubt.
The story teeters on frustration that nearly stopped me from continuing it. I had to push on. I had to wade through all the names of all the friends, family, and relationships at play here. Then I had to force myself to understand it. But I had to push on like that the first time I read Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I ended up reading that book three times before I figured out that Benjy was me and that all the other characters in Faulkner’s story are just symbols for all the people we meet in everyday life—mirrors of a society populated by imperfect people who seem always to repeat the cycle of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow that signifies nothing; Benjy, a boy that others hear all too well as he bellows out the sound of loneliness and mystification at a world he can hardly comprehend.
In Machida’s story, that’s translated from Japanese, the 52-hertz boy, the speechless Itoshi, bellows in silence and so does Ms. Mishima whose voice narrates the story in a declarative style that sometimes made me think this is a memoir. Yet, somehow they manage to hear each other.
–H. R. Novelton
Publisher: Putnam’s Sons, New York
Copyright 2027 by XX
Star Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
The story is about Ms. Michima (Kiko), whose failure to stand up for herself and speak her mind to her horribly abusive mother and stepfather results in her meeting An, who saves her and loves her. However, his failure to stand up for himself and speak his mind to Kiko results in a catastrophic collision of expectations, most of which are An’s. You might call the whole story a calamity of misdirected energy with a twist of child abuse, a teaspoon of tragedy, and a sprinkle of hope.
My #1 wish for this story would be for Machida to show me, or at least tell me, why Kiko lets herself become snarled by Chikara, why she doesn’t see him as the flimsy character he is; and conversely, she fails to explain why An cannot or does not express himself in a meaningful way that might bring about a warmer relationship with Kiko, which he obviously wants to have.
This seems to be the story about all the things the characters do not or cannot say. It’s an exploration into a kind of twilight zone of dysfunctional relationships. A kind of bizarro world that’s perhaps like the world of the 52-hertz whale which sings in the darkness of the sea only to have no other whales hear it.
As I grew deeper into this story, I began to wonder why Machida doesn’t reveal her character Kiko’s deeper sensibility and bring us closer to the edge of something that is frightening, which really is at the heart of her 52-hertz conundrum, leaving us with the eternal question of whether or not we can hear ourselves. If this book wasn’t already well put to bed and already a fine-selling novel in Japan, I’d suggest Machida push deeper into Ms. Mishima to see what ironies might be hiding within her, what is it really that causes her such regret over An?
But of course, this sort of thing usually rides on the back of a fragile nuance and could have been lost in the translation. So I push up the star rating from four to five stars, simply giving it the benefit of the doubt.
The story teeters on frustration that nearly stopped me from continuing it. I had to push on. I had to wade through all the names of all the friends, family, and relationships at play here. Then I had to force myself to understand it. But I had to push on like that the first time I read Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I ended up reading that book three times before I figured out that Benjy was me and that all the other characters in Faulkner’s story are just symbols for all the people we meet in everyday life—mirrors of a society populated by imperfect people who seem always to repeat the cycle of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow that signifies nothing; Benjy, a boy that others hear all too well as he bellows out the sound of loneliness and mystification at a world he can hardly comprehend.
In Machida’s story, that’s translated from Japanese, the 52-hertz boy, the speechless Itoshi, bellows in silence and so does Ms. Mishima whose voice narrates the story in a declarative style that sometimes made me think this is a memoir. Yet, somehow they manage to hear each other.
–H. R. Novelton
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