Since there were only 122 pages, I thought I could finish this in a day but honestly, it wasn’t that easy. This book was just stock piled with emotion from the top of the spectrum to the very bottom and you have to take the time to read it. The first half of the book took a while to settle into but as I read on, it started to grow on to me. One thing about ‘Territory of Light’ that made it difficult to get my head around is that there’s no definitive ending. The protagonist (I don’t even know her exact name) wasn’t working towards something for the entire book but it just seemed like she was trying to get by. It was as if we were watching this snapshot of a year in her life, where nothing spectacular happens and there’s no build up to a grand ending. Instead she’s really struggling to raise her daughter and is filled with despair and sadness when it comes to friends and her husband (who quite frankly is pretty useless and annoying). So it’s quite poignant when she ends up slowly falling into the darkness.

Overall, it’s completely different content compared to what I usually read but not necessarily different in a bad way. When it comes to reading or even watching, we all want an ending, whether it’s good or bad. Does she end up happy or will she just march into the sunset to start a new life? And whilst I’ve become accustomed to this kind of thinking, reading ‘Territory of Light’ changed that. Life didn’t end for the protagonist so why should we have a ‘…and so she lived happily ever after’? This book really took it to the realistic side of life and I’m thankful for that.

A woman, newly separated from her husband, rents an apartment in Japan and tries to raise her young daughter by herself.

To be honest, little else happens, but the story was interesting in a number of ways. Firstly, it was originally published in the 1970s as 12 monthly installments, which ties in with the progress of the narrative and explains any recapping. It also gives an interesting insight into the social attitude of Japan at the time towards a separated single mother.

The common theme of light was explored in a number of ways and the unnamed female narrator was honest and engaging in her struggles, telling the story without judgement. I also found her recounting of dreams interesting and an unspoken explanation of her character.

refreshing and utterly absorbing story of a woman left by her husband to raise her two-year old daughter. working, child care and loneliness, coping with matters of the world formerly looked after by her immature husband, is all new to her, and she rises to the challenge albeit not as a 'perfect' domestic specimen but as a real life person, making mistakes, sorting things out her way. when they come to put mesh over the windows, like her, I was worried the light would be blocked. her child's nightmares are worrying but also disturb her sleep - as any mother can tell you, there is always this constant inner debate whose best interests come first? really pleased to have read this - and i can imagine it's not something many men would appreciate!

Different to any book I’ve read before. It was beautifully written and quick to read. I had never read any Japanese literature before and am glad to say that I enjoyed it.

This is a story of a woman who dumps her husband then slaps her small daughter and leaves her alone in the apartment while she goes out drinking. The story goes nowhere and left me wondering why it was published.

A series of vignettes of a single mother struggling with friends, family and a society that disapproves of her status. The vignettes follow her path from initial separation through a year covering joy, despair, depression, anger and desire. The book was originally published as monthly stories, which does mean small amounts of repetition and large time jumps, but I felt it worked. The early, softer sections deepen into poetic descriptions of light and beauty as the protagonist descends into darkness herself.

Having previously enjoyed a short story/novella by Tsushima, I was keen to read more, and Territory of Light didn't disappoint. This story does follow a standard timeline, but it does so in the form of a series of vignettes, looking at the life of a woman with a young child as she separates from her husband and branches out alone. Therefore, there is no clear plot or ending outside of that scenario. It's really more of a snapshot. The constant imagery of light is beautifully handled through the novel, and I adore Tsushima's descriptive, lyrical prose. Territory of Light is a delight to read and should appeal to readers of modern, thoughtful fiction. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more works by this author in the future.

Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima

A scintillating, absorbing and thought-provoking read

In this intriguing novel, Yuko Tsushima manages to interlace a gentle exploration of the life of her anonymous heroine with some extremely lyrical writing about light.

The story follows a young Japanese mother through her year following her separation from her husband. The exploration of her relations with him, her work colleagues, new neighbours and friends are all skilfully handled, generating an absorbing narrative encompassing despair, desire, bewilderment and anger. Tsushima’s writing details how her heroine’s new life enables her to transform her thinking and leads her to realise how much she had changed and why she couldn’t return to her old life.

Almost every chapter shows how light generally has an uplifting effect on the heroine’s increasing sense of loneliness, unease over her decisions concerning her marriage and the upbringing of her young daughter. Light is an important “character” within the novel - whether as dazzling sunshine in the new apartment, appearing as dappled shade through the trees in the nearby park or as radiant fireworks for instance – and Tsushima’s descriptive writing generates fabulous word-painted images.

I found this rediscovered classic absorbing, thought-provoking and scintillating in its entirety.

Territory of Light was originally published in the Japanese literary monthly magazine between 1978 and 1979 with each chapter marking the months in real time. It is now being published in English translation in one instalment of multiple chapters. It won the inaugural Noma Literary Prize and Tsushima subsequently won many awards in her career. She died in February 2016.

The novel tells the story of a young woman separating from her husband and setting up a new life in a Tokyo apartment with her two-year-old daughter. The apartment has windows on every side and is filled with light, but the woman herself gradually falls into darkness.

I imagine reading this in monthly instalments would be a very different experience to reading it all in one go. Each instalment is only about 10 pages long and therefore does not take long to read. But reading the whole thing feels, to me at least, rather disjointed: there are jumps between the chapters that you probably would not notice if it was 4 weeks since you last read the book but which feel odd when coming in quick succession. And there are repetitions that are probably useful when reading over a year but not necessary when reading over a day. It has the feel of a book that should be edited a bit to give continuity and remove redundancy if it is to be sold as a single novel.

The writing style also seems to change as the story progresses. I am not sure if this is deliberate. It is very functional at the start, simply relating the story to the reader. But as the year progresses, it becomes more and more poetic. It could well be that this is purposeful and somehow reflects the unraveling of our protagonist’s mental state, but I am not sure about that. At times, I was reminded of more recent book like Eileen and Sorry To Disrupt The Peace. Those books contain far more in terms of bodily fluids/functions and it is not that the protagonist here is unlikeable in the same way, but there is something about the feel of the book that reminded me of these newer works.

I have to say that I did not really enjoy the first half of the book as I couldn’t engage with it and it seemed, quite frankly, rather dull. But the second half was far more absorbing so I am glad I did not give in to the temptation to put it down. But, overall, I can’t see my way to giving it more than 3 stars. Those who liked Eileen and Sorry… might enjoy this as a sort of retro, slightly more innocent version of those (think of how horror movies nowadays compare with horror movies of 50 years ago and it’s that kind of difference: those older ones were probably scary at the time but not to most people looking back from today).

My thanks to the publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

The writing and translation are wonderful. Prose clear and flowing, but the story was too lonely and sad for me. I struggled with the sheer depressive mood of it all and I’m sure there were interpretations I was meant to get, but I’m afraid the disjointed chapters didn’t work for me. I realise this was a serial in a Japanese magazine but it wasn’t something I could really get into I’m afraid.