Book Review: New in Print

The Lake

by Banana Yoshimoto
Melville House, 188 pp., $23.95

The most common critique of Banana Yoshimoto's work – from her 1988 breakthrough smash, Kitchen, to this most recent offering – is its lightness, a trait the author embraces. Her narrative simplicity and crystal-clear imagery splits the difference between publishing housemate Tao Lin's numbing literature vérité and the lyrical nature of a haiku. In that way, Yoshimoto claims a unique place in the pantheon of Japanese literature: at once modern and traditional.

The Lake follows shy Tokyo muralist Chihiro as she falls for a troubled and mysterious man while mourning the death of her mother. The relationship is built on a foundation of thin glass, lending the novel its tension as secrets are revealed, and the couple finds strength in their discoveries of childhood trauma and its lingering ghosts.

Yoshimoto hasn't altered her writing style much over the past two decades. Quick pacing, her frequent theme of death, and quirky, sometimes surreal touches are all present in The Lake, as are the moments of poetic beauty that feel very Japanese while transcending race with their emotional directness. Take, for example, these three short paragraphs describing Chihiro's mourning of her mother:

"It's no different, even now that I'm going on thirty.

Last time I saw my dad, he stared at me with moist eyes.

I've come to resemble her."

The author has mastered a style she introduced with Kitchen and yet still feels the need to justify that style through her protagonist. Chihiro quotes her critics as she expounds on the creative process of painting: "Look at her, they'd say, painting those childish pictures, she has practically no technique." The parallels between character and author are obvious. After 12 works of fiction and a level of success many writers would kill for, it seems gratuitous to spend several pages of an otherwise lean book deflecting criticism.

It's a small wave in an otherwise smooth sail of a read, however. Yoshimoto's trademark unfettered and unabashedly easy writing style makes The Lake a dark horse for presummer beach reading.