ゆっくりおやすみ、樹の下で

A nostalgic, philosophical children's novel

ゆっくりおやすみ、樹の下で is a children's book about a little girl named Mirei who goes to spend the summer at her estranged grandmother's house. This book was written by Genichiro Takahashi, an author and literary critic famous for his surrealist, postmodern debut novel さようなら、ギャングたち.

This book uses plenty of kanji but has full furigana, however the physical book is a tiny little bunko so the pages are crowded (there was evidently also a tankobon edition which is larger, but I haven't found it, so it may b

Boring

This was my first DNF in Japanese. I decided to stop reading it because I wasn't really enjoying the story and I found the writing/grammar/vocabulary very easy in terms of the Japanese used.

Yes, it was nice to read something so easy (I maybe looked up a word every 10 pages), but that made me criticize the story more.

Personally, I prefer more exciting stories. While this contained some nice life lessons and I liked the narrator (and the cover), it was also very slice of life-oriented rather

This is a gentle and thoughtful book. A little girl named Mirei visits her grandmother in the old family mansion in Kamakura. The house is heaped with the belongings and memories of 100 years of family members. It almost seems like the past could be alive in this place. And then one night, the broken grandfather clock starts to tick again, and Mirei meets the people of the past.

This book builds momentum slowly. The first half sets the scene and establishes the main characters. The protagonist