A quiet and fragile plot with both numbness and despair in its setting and tone, alternatingly told in between two narrators; a male architect who is still grieving with his brother’s suicide and a female sculptor who goes to Tokyo to learn on how to prepare blowfish as she contemplates in ending her life. Their paths crossed at a point with each history of grief and the chaos of thoughts captured in vignettes; of one’s emotional journey and trauma, on familial, art and the stillness after loss with a triggering temptation of death that cunningly go lurking in between.
Both narratives lured me in through their dark, devastating backstories, felt moody and intense yet I liked how each drowned me into their piercing day-to-day emotional struggles; lots of grieving and loneliness rants with a trip to delicacy of eating blowfish that wrapped the sculptor’s mind in unraveling the truth about her grandmother’s suicide as well for the architect to traverse me through his guilt and the traumas surrounded his parents after the tragedy.
“Legacy. For her there was always something following her around, making her think about death.”
“Anxiety tailed him like a white string destined to be attached to him forever.”
Loved the sculptor’s interactions with the blowfish’s seller as well how both narratives interlaced as the architect sees the sculptor’s face having the same expression as his brother and became anxiously wanting to save her. A plot that entirely explored on how people lost their reason to live yet slowly and quietly searching for a reason to stay— there was sadness and fear as well a chilling existential tale with a trigger warning for its vivid and imagery suicide scene(s), depression, self-harm and emotional neglect.
An affecting read throughout for me. Not really a read for everyone, I think, but if you are drawn to themes of grief, existential reflection or despair and appreciates a quiet, depressing character-driven fiction then perhaps you might enjoy this as much as I do.
"There were two kinds of lives. A life you were born into and a life you built. It was all a question of choice."
(Thank you Pansing Distribution for the gifted review copy!)