Author(s): Banana Yoshimoto

Contemporary Fiction

I had a melancholy premonition of reaching the end of the road and getting lost inside a distant tide.  It was the beginning of summer, and I was nineteen years old.

Yayoi lives with her perfect, loving family - something 'like you'd see in a Spielberg movie'.  But while her parents tell happy stories of her childhood, she is increasingly haunted by the sense that she's forgotten something important about her past.

Deciding to take a break, she goes to stay with Yukingo, her mysterious but beloved aunt, whose strange behaviour includes waking Yayoi at two in the morning to be her drinking companion, watching Friday the 13th over and over and throwing away all the things she wants to forget.  Living a life without order and rules, Yukino seems to be protecting herself, but beneath this facade Yayoi starts to recover her own lost memories, and everything she knows about her family threatens to change forever.