GIFTED

by Suzumi Suzuki

This is not a story about endings or life changes so much as the period before you start saying goodbye to your old life. Our narrator’s mother – who is in hospice – wants to spend her last days with her daughter. So, her daughter spends the novella trying to tie up loose ends in memories and in the many hidden clubs and bars of Tokyo’s Kabukicho district. This is a warren-like novella where memory and present day are intertwined. As one life ends, and another begins. I loved it.​

-Reviewed by Lindsay

More great Japanese fiction . . .