A beautiful and witty book about Maria’s last summer in the place where she grew up. Soft, gentle and poetic description of the minutia and of the incredible and she and her cousins cope with love, death, violence and happiness in the course of growing up. ( )

Hilariously funny! ( )

An amazing book full of such beautiful descriptions of nature (the beach, the city, the sun, etc) and feelings.

It speaks of transitions of life and it resounds so deeply within me and I feel like shouting yes, that was exactly how I felt each time there has been a change in my life. Absolutely well written.

As well the above, it is also about life (as opposed to death) and one's will to live and what to make of that life. How life changing a brush with death could be. ( )

Tsugumi lives with her parents and older sister in the seaside inn that her parents own. She is frail, though at times it's difficult to remember just how frail. Because they are so concerned for her poor health, her parents and sister indulge her every whim as they have since her birth. Tsugumi has mixed feelings about this; she berates her family at every opportunity which makes her seem like a spoiled brat. Spoiled brat she is, some might even call her worse, but only her cousin Maria, the books narrator, ever calls her on her behavior. After one particularly hurtful remark, Maria slaps Tsugumi so hard that she falls down. Tsugumi instantly sees that Maria will treat her how she wants to be treated, not put up with her nonsense, and the two cousins become fast friends.

Shortly into the novel Maria's family moves to Tokyo where she starts university. Maria is obsessed with her cousin and with the life she left at the seaside inn which will soon be sold to make way for a large hotel complex. She decides to spend one last summer at the inn with her cousins. That summer and the adventures the girls have make up the bulk of the novel. There is a romance with a rich boy, there are two puppies, there is a criminal plot, a picnic on the beach, a near death experience and finally the goodbyes. Just what one would expect in a summer-love type story. The three cousins become even closer friends, just as they are about to drift apart into adulthood.

The character of Tsugumi is what separates this novel from its more pedestrian relations. When one of the dogs is kidnapped by local thugs, she is the one who becomes obsessed with not just getting the dog back but with getting revenge. She hatches a complicated plot that the others think goes too far and I thought was hard to believe such a frail person could pull off. (I won't give it away here but it involves a lot of digging, more than I could probably do and I would not describe myself as frail.) Tsugumi remains an unpleasant young woman throughout the novel, though she is the one who has the romance with the rich boy, and it's not exactly clear if she has learned her lesson by the end. In a more typical summer at the seaside story Tsugumi probably would have been the villain instead of one of the three friends.

There is plenty in Goodbye Tsugumi for readers looking to find out what life in modern Japan is like. The characters are not exotic, so we get to see what life is like for everyday folk in Japan. It was interesting, for example, to see how difficult it can be to end a marriage. Maria's father faced a difficult period trying to get a divorce from his wife so he could be with Maria and her mother. Along with a look into two different Japanese families we get a look into Japanese schools and universities. I found the details here to be interesting without getting in the way of the story. In Goodbye Tsugumi the reader can pick up quite a lot about Japan without realizing it. (I am trusting that Ms. Yoshimoto's depiction of Japan is an honest one.)

But in the end, it all must come back to the unpleasant young woman Tsugumi. Frankly, I just didn't really like her much. It was difficult for me to see what Maria saw in her. I understand the blood ties of family relationships, but once she'd moved to Tokyo with her family I thought she should have said goodbye to Tsugumi. So, in the end, I'm giving Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto three out of five stars. ( )

When you've read every Haruki Murakami and you want more of the straightforward stuff (Norwegian Wood / South of The Border type) then this is a good place to go ( )