📚 R E V I E W 📚

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

This is officially the oldest book I had to read on Netgalley. I received it in 2011 😳! Thanks to @neverending_netgalley for making me address this situation and finally reading it. This came out when everyone was reading the author’s books, especially Kitchen, which everyone was talking about at the time, so I was intrigued to find out what all the fuss was about.

The Lake is only just over 200 pages long but it took a good few chapters to get into. It is definitely a quiet story with very little plot, but quite a shocking end. Chihiro has moved to Tokyo to grieve the death of her mother and hopefully become a successful mural artist. She is looking towards her future when she meets Nakajima, who is haunted by an extremely traumatic experience from his childhood. Together they form a relationship where they meet in the middle of their troubles.

I didn’t really warm to Chihiro at first as I found her quite flippant with her feelings. One minute she doted on a Nakajima, the next he would get on her nerves. As the book progresses she appears to mature and she is completely there for Nakajima at the end of the book when she discovers what happened to him as a child.

This book wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I can’t help wondering if something got lost in translation, as I was expecting so much more of the poetical style I felt I was promised by this author.

A very slow mystery wrapped in a very short book.

Thanks to @netgalley & @melvillehouse for the review copy.