Banana yoshimoto short stories

Melville House, 2011

The Lake, is decidedly a study of two, but rather than a dialogue, the short novel functions in many ways as a dyad, a painting of two figures, a complex study of those figures in relationship to the ghosts of their respective pasts, and of course, to each other.

Chihiro, the protagonist and narrator of The Lake, is a muralist living in Tokyo. Like many of Yoshimoto's characters, Chihiro is a bit offbeat; she comes from an unusual family, and she's happy, yet lonely, living an independent life.

Having recently lost her mother to illness, Chihiro returns to her apartment and begins a relationship with Nakajima, a neighbor with a window across the road from her own, with whom she has shared glances, smiles, and waves for quite some time.

Chihiro and Nakajima, who is mourning the less-recent loss of his own mother, gently forge a bond across the divide of their collective grief. One of the delights of the novel is Yoshimoto's finely