First page second graph "standing here like this I couldn't help but recall my first memory." seemed too clunky a transition. IMO

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review of Block Seventeen by Kimiko Guthrie. This is my 00:00 (Zero O’Clock) selection for the 2020 Bangtanathon. I had a lot of fun with this strange book and I’m glad that I chose to pick up this ARC because it provided the distraction I needed.

This book is about a woman named Akiko/Aki who has decided to go by Jane. She is the daughter of a Japanese woman and white American man. Her mother’s family was forced into the Japanese internment camps and from what I’ve read, the inspiration for this story is based on Kimiko Guthrie’s real life as a half-Japanese, half-white American. Jane lives with her conspiracy theorist boyfriend of five years, Shiro, in relative bliss before things start to get weird. Their shared home is broken into but no one takes anything. Soon after that, Jane’s mother goes physically missing even though she corresponds with her through the internet. Meanwhile, Shiro is trying to bring down the government as he works in TSA and uncovers some illegal dealings.

The story shifts between 2012, where Jane is writing to her and Shiro’s child and the time of the Japanese internment days where Jane’s grandmother slowly goes mad. There are links between Jane, her unborn child, and her uncle Aki who she is named after who died in infancy all those years ago. Since then, her family has pushed the memory of him to the side with the excuse that babies died a lot back then. Shiro wants to move forward with Jane but there is something mentally keeping her from being a wife and proper mother. Her family’s secrets and mistakes during that time weigh on her more than she lets on and Jane starts to realize that she pushes all unpleasant things away until they don’t exist.

This is a story about family traumas and mental illnesses. There are certain occurrences throughout this book that makes the reader wonder if it’s supernatural or something in Jane’s head. It also doesn’t help that Shiro is a conspiracy theorist who is always on edge and looking to uncover some sort of mystery. I am a fan of Japanese culture and I think that the Japanese Internment Camps is one of the many dark stains in American history that isn’t touched on as often as it should be. I’ve read many books in my lifetime but this is the first one that has gone into the inhumane parts of those camps.

As much as it makes me cringe to say, this book is very Haruki Murakami-esque with a feminine voice. I don’t think that’s a bad thing since I’m a big fan of Haruki Murakami but I think the seemingly mundane and existential lens mixed with the mixing of contemporary and past Japanese-American life feels like reading a Japanese American version of a Murakami novel. There were times when this book reminded me of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which happens to be one of my favorite Murakami novels.

Once transported into Jane’s world, it’s easy to get invested in the story. The way Jane’s life plays out until her lowest moments felt like a roller coaster but in the best way. My main complaint is that the ending felt kind of rushed and abrupt. A chapter before, Jane was at her lowest point but then by the end of the book she just decided to be like “I’m fine and I’m going by Akiko now” and that was it and everything was seemingly solved for the time being. It felt strange.

All in all I appreciated this book for what it is. I will be interested in reading a finalized hard copy of this.

This book excels in the realm of a surreal, unreliable narrator experience, but fell short for me in terms of connection and plot. It felt like the author had too much to say for one book, and so the focus became muddled and lost. I could see where the author wanted me to react, but I didn’t understand why until closer to the end, and by then I really disliked the narrator and her choices, so it all seemed pointless. There were some strong moments, like the end with the crossing of the creek and the call to come home, but beyond that, I was left confused by long narrative details that led nowhere and asking why too much for my personal taste.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

The prose in this book felt choppy to me. There were moments of humor but overall, I did not engage with the story. I did not finish this one.

This book seemed odd at first but regardless, I was quickly sucked into Jane’s world. It will likely get compared to Murakami’s writing and I can see why. It is otherworldly like his writing, but seems more cohesive and sensical. As someone who has been called half breed and mutt for most of my life, that part of Jane’s/Akiko’s life, that part of her confusion with her identity made so much sense. And this book sucked me in, made me want to cry, and Laughed. It was great! I can’t wait to read more by her.

“The last thing I wanted was to fall into the bogus stereotype of the passive, voiceless Asian American woman. And yet sometimes that’s exactly how I felt”.

I really wanted to like this book. It’s always fun to read books that take place in areas where you grew up... and much of this book takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Plus I love the Japanese culture - so it felt like a great fit.
There were times I enjoyed the dialogue— yet the book felt very disjointed.

When the book was funny is when I liked it best and yet it’s not a ha ha funny book.
It was dialogue like this that I enjoyed best:
“That was it— all at once I burst at the seams and out came peals of wild, hysterical laughter. I fell off my chair, rolled on the floor away from the table, arched back, doubled over; I was sure my entire meal would come projecting out of me. I don’t know when I’d last been so consumed by any emotion, let alone such full-on, unabashed hysterics like this. The outburst lasted for sometime, despite my efforts to squelch it. Finally, completely drained, side aching, I collapsed on the floor, moaning lightly. It was a wonderful release, honesty”.
“Um, you okay there?” Shiro asked”.
“Sorry ... I have no idea where that came from ... what were we talking about? I took several deep breaths and managed to prop myself on my knees, resting my head on my chair”.
“Something hilarious, apparently—your mom’s disappearance”.

Looking back.....
Rohwer, September 23, 1942
“The girl stands in the doorway, watching her sister walk the baby up and down the floor of their new home: a cramped room in a newly assembled, army-style barrack, which they are told will soon be divided into two, to share with another family”.

So although I thought the book had potential - ( a young woman finding her place in the world- while trying to empathize past trauma: her mother having once been in the Japanese camps during WWII), with some enjoyable dialogue, I had problems staying focus and connecting the books purpose - it’s authenticity with my own.

Thank you Blackstone Publishing, Netgalley, and Kimiko Guthrie

I had high hopes for this novel. I love Asian culture and i love psychological fiction.
Sadly, this appeared to be trying too hard to cover too many Social Justice Warrior themes, and every one of them was short-changed.
Overwritten and overwrought.

Block Seventeen is told through the lens of Akiko, preferably Jane, and her interactions with her mother, Sumi, and boyfriend/fiance, Shiro. Throughout the novel there is a detachment between Jane and not only these individuals, but the world around her.

Guthrie reflects on the themes such as imperialism and identity through the conversation and thought processes of the characters, and how this affects different generations of Japanese/Asian Americans. Akiko/Jane is an unreliable narrator, and with the employ of distinct, vivid imagery, the reader is asked to determine for themselves whether supernatural forces are actual at play, or if Akiko/Jane is plagued by a supposed inherited mental illness.

With this novel, Guthrie analyzes generational trauma and finding your own place in the world.

An uneven psychological not-quite-thriller about the lives of women in one family that was interned during the second World War in the Japanese camps. The narrator appears even-keeled and rational, until it's apparent she isn't at all. Her mother, whose present is a direct expression of the trauma of her time as a child in the camp, is the narrator writ large; heartbreaking scenes reveal the narrator's grandmother as a person utterly broken by the government and circumstances. This is a work in which all of the characters as mentally ill and there's no "normate"--only our own ideas of what that might be.