“It’s pouring, the trees are getting greener before my eyes, I love you. I’m almost afraid of the intensity of this happiness.” – Vladimir Nabokov, Letters To Vera
The main character of this Yoshimoto book is quite similar to all of her novels: a young, modern Japanese woman who has endured great trauma but manages to keep an open heart to the world despite it. A lot of tragedy besets the particular narrator of this book, Sakumi; before it even begins, her father and then sister have passed away and she has had an accident that causes her brain damage. Despite the heavy scene that sets up, this novel is breezy and fantastical.
It may be about family and loss but it’s also about youth, traveling, love, and magic. It abounds with mystical powers, ghosts, mind reading, and unexplained events. It’s true magical realism, in the vein of Salman Rushdie or her modern Japanese peer Haruki Murakami. But “Amrita” is much more feminine and warm than either of those authors’ works. Although there are fantastical elements it’s still normal life that she is concerned with.
Yoshimoto strong suit perfectly describes moments…eating street food late at night with the narrator’s pre-teen brother, listening to a friend sing at a bar, and waking up in the morning in a strange room. She loves the moments in which you might stop to record in your mind exactly what’s around you for a beautiful and brief second. A large section of the book is taken up by a vacation to the tropical island of Saipan. She perfectly captures the contrast between a slow island culture in which past, future, and present seem to be the same thing; and then the narrator’s metropolitan life which seems busy for no reason.
This is a book that’s kinda about nothing but everything all at once. Several significant, often tragic, events occur, but the book isn’t really about those big moments. Instead, it zooms in on the small moments of everyday life that happen in between the life-changing ones. There’s also a lot of magic and the unexplained happening, from ghosts to telepathy, but again this isn’t the focus. Instead, the focus is on everyday interactions, sunsets, street food, memories, and beaches. It’s a celebration of the beauty of life and the world while grieving the impermanence of it all. Everything in this book is beautiful and joyful and sad all at once.
This is Yoshimoto’s most experimental novel. That may not be saying much considering how sparse the prose in her other novels is, but Amrita jumps in time and place quite often. She’s purposefully lost the sharp editing of Kitchen. The book is quite long and suffers a little from the narrator’s constant analysis of her state of mind. Occasionally the thoughts directly contradict themselves so much that it resembles an unedited journal entry. I also can’t help but feel like the translation is a little clunky in these parts; something just isn’t coming across. I couldn’t fault anyone for becoming weary with the writing for that reason, but once I accepted the uninterrupted flow I became comfortable with Sakumi’s voice.
Many people have a problem with “Amrita”, saying it is too weird or about nothing in particular. Some characters possess powers most people don’t: they can enter other people’s dreams, they have premonitions, and they are deeply connected to themselves and others. For me, though this is not some magic (I sometimes have premonitions, usually in the form of dreams) but an element of reality many feel uncomfortable with but I feel perfectly at peace with.
It’s a novel about family bonds, trust, and autonomy family members give to one another. Reading about so many unhappy families in Japanese literature here it was a breath of fresh air to see a family, considered ‘strange’ for being unconventional by the conservative protagonist, but healthy, imperfectly happy, and at ease. People who truly enjoy spending time in each other’s company. For all the above I hold Yoshimoto in the pantheon of authors who move me, evoke the deepest emotions, and make me pay attention to the joy of simple moments. And this is what I treasure.