![]() ![]() There’s warmth, wit and wisdom within the book, but I’d somehow hoped for a particularly new and revelatory nugget at the end. (Phew!) Elsewhere, Ruth declares herself to feel a ‘sense of kinship with this woman from another time and place, engaged in self-revelatory, self-concealing and self-effacing acts’. ![]() (It’s his watch and letters in the Hello Kitty lunchbox.)Īnd aha! It turns out I wasn’t so far off track, for the watch is set ticking and a Japanese Jungle Crow turns up on Ruth’s island and is obviously the reincarnation of the kamikaze pilot who leads Ruth, by dream, to Tiko’s temple. (Eastern and Western attitudes to suicide - honour or shame - are impressively explored.) Emotional and spiritual rescue for Nao comes from spending time in her 104-year-old great-grandmother Tiko’s temple where she learns about the lives of her ancestors, including an uncle who was a kamikaze pilot. Her father keeps trying to commit suicide. ![]() The bullying she endures at school is close to torture. ![]() Brought up in America, Nao’s Japanese father loses his job in Silicon Valley and she’s taken to Tokyo. Ruth’s sections can become a bit tedious, whereas Nao’s diary is unfailingly vivid, dramatic, sassy and moving. ![]()
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