This book is titled after a literary genre called 私小説 ("I-novel" in English) where an autobiographical content is recounted in the form of a novel. You thus get dialogue, flashbacks, narration, and so on, but applied to content that (supposedly) happened in real life.
In this specific case, the whole "action" takes place over the course of a single day, Friday December 13th 19XX, which marks the 20th anniversary of the author's arrival to the us, along with her family. Upon receiving an "early" morning phone call from her older sister, the author spends the day between reminiscing about those 20 years, her feelings of being stuck between cultures, and finally taking some action to move forwards.
I enjoyed the writing, which showed the skill range of the author. I appreciated the way she plays around with the composition to depict her being drunk (uneven lines) or nostalgia (using katakana instead of hiragana, i.e., pre-war format). As mentioned by the other review, she will also cite literary classics in their full pre-reform kana and kanji glory, which might be difficult for a Japanese learner without experience with those (it's good practice, though! You can check pm215 intro on reading those on the forum too: https://forums.learnnatively.com/t/2023-aozora-short-story-and-essay-advent/5663/8)
What I enjoyed less (and would even call a trigger warning) is the constant depiction of the debilitating loneliness and depression the author felt at the time. I have to say that it did take a toll on me. The book ends on a somewhat optimistic note (and, since I could check what happened to the author, I guess you could say things turned out all right), which helped a bit, but I don't think I would recommend this book if you are in a bad place yourself.
As a fun tidbit, the author mentioned having published a research article earlier during year 19XX. Google scholar tells me it's 1985, which indeed had a Friday, December 13th.
Crushing loneliness and depression
This book is titled after a literary genre called 私小説 ("I-novel" in English) where an autobiographical content is recounted in the form of a novel. You thus get dialogue, flashbacks, narration, and so on, but applied to content that (supposedly) happened in real life. In this specific case, the whole "action" takes place over the course of a single day, Friday December 13th 19XX, which marks the 20th anniversary of the author's arrival to the us, along with her family. Upon receiving an "early" morning phone call from her older sister, the author spends the day between reminiscing about those 20 years, her feelings of being stuck between cultures, and finally taking some action to move forwards.
I enjoyed the writing, which showed the skill range of the author. I appreciated the way she plays around with the composition to depict her being drunk (uneven lines) or nostalgia (using katakana instead of hiragana, i.e., pre-war format). As mentioned by the other review, she will also cite literary classics in their full pre-reform kana and kanji glory, which might be difficult for a Japanese learner without experience with those (it's good practice, though! You can check pm215 intro on reading those on the forum too: https://forums.learnnatively.com/t/2023-aozora-short-story-and-essay-advent/5663/8)
What I enjoyed less (and would even call a trigger warning) is the constant depiction of the debilitating loneliness and depression the author felt at the time. I have to say that it did take a toll on me. The book ends on a somewhat optimistic note (and, since I could check what happened to the author, I guess you could say things turned out all right), which helped a bit, but I don't think I would recommend this book if you are in a bad place yourself.
As a fun tidbit, the author mentioned having published a research article earlier during year 19XX. Google scholar tells me it's 1985, which indeed had a Friday, December 13th.