The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto really highlights her trademark lyrical style, as it deals with loneliness and disassociation, loss, and the long period of blind wandering it takes before you can fully process experiences. In some ways the simplest of her stories, but also somehow the purest.
Chihiro becomes attached to seeing a young man in the building across from her, watching for him every day. Nakajima also seems lonely. When they meet and he begins to stay over at her place more than his own, it's like they are dating. She has been grieving the death of her mother and doesn't connect to her birth father, whereas Nakajima has a deep hurt he can't deal with yet. Eventually, he takes her to visit a remote lake house where two of his friends live off the grid, and she begins to learn about his traumatic past. Chihiro is a mural painter and she weaves elements into her next project of Nakajima's past and the monastic couple from the lake.
A sparse plot, without a lot of momentum, but unique and memorable. She does a good job with the difficult subject of loneliness, trauma and recovery. There is also a supernatural element that doesn't seem out of place. To me it's the quietest of her novels, it feels stripped away and that's a compliment. She is internationally praised for her masterly writing, and there is a unique feeling when you enter a Banana Yoshimoto novel - she certainly creates her own world - time and again the reader is transported not just in place but in emotion.
In some way I can't put my finger on, for me this is near her best.
2005 (translated 2011) / Hardcover / 188 pages
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