Clarissa Goenawan

Clarissa Goenawan deserves to have a much bigger following than she currently has. In Both her first novel, Rainbirds, and her second, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida, she shows a talent for painting complex portraits of characters who carry a burden of uncertainty—about identity, about their own life stories, about the stories of those they love. This results in a sort of tentativeness in her writing, but it's a tentativeness that engages and opens possibilities, not one that creates show more distance or disengagement.

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida follows three different characters trying to understand the suicide of the Miwako of the title. Each of them has parts of the picture, but none of them has the whole. By telling their stories, Goenawan lets readers assemble a portrait of Miwako that's beyond the reach of the book's main characters.

I strongly recommend this book for all readers who enjoy cosmopolitan novels (this one is set mainly in Tokyo), mysteries, and/or psychological portraits. The rewards it offers are immense. show less

Billed as a mystery/thriller, this book is much quieter than that designation implies. First and foremost this is literary fiction that has a lot to say about familial relationships as well as grief. The book opens as the protagonist is called to a small town when his sister is killed. And, because of her death, there is, I suppose, a mystery at the core of the book. But the true heart of the book is the slow, creepy unraveling of Ren's following in his sister's footsteps after her death. He show more is less on a mission to find out about her death (but for a couple of odd coincidences, he may never have stayed or questioned this at all), and more holding on to someone he doesn't want to let go of. Haunting. show less

Each time I read work by Clarissa Goenawan I find myself wondering why she isn't better known. She deserves to be up there with writers we rely on to simultaneously entertain us and to force us to broaden our understanding of what it means to be human. I'm thinking of writers like Barbara Kingsolver, Ruth Ozeki, and Geraldine Brooks.

Goenawan lives in Singapore, but her novels are primarily set in Japan. In Watersong, Shouji Arai finds himself working as an "ear prostitute" in an unusual tea show more house. His job is to listen to the tea house's patrons, who pay a high price for a pot of tea and an hour of attention. He is not to think of himself as a therapist or a problem solver: he is merely a set of ears taking in whatever a customer says.

Souji grew up having nightmares of drowning. His mother took him to a local fortune teller, whose "diagnosis" was ambivalent. Shouji might drown, someone he loves might drown, but he is kind, so there's a chance he might be spared both fates.

At the novel's start, Souji makes the mistake of trying to help a client, a decision that sets his life on a dangerous course.

That's all I want to say about the plot, for fear of unduly influencing others' reading experiences, but it spins out from there in unsettling ways.

Watersong is a novel that I most decidedly enjoyed reading and one that I would recommend to others, though I would suggest beginning with one of her two previous novels: Rainbirds and The Perfect Life of Miwako Sumida. Why? Because with Watersong, Goenawan seems to be moving a a new direction compared to those works, and I think it would best be read after experiencing one of those two novels and spending some time with her writing voice as it originally emerged.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own. show less

Rating: 3.75

Toni Morrison said that “all water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” In Watersong, water is similarly linked to memory; but unlike Morrison, Goenawan branches out to the more-obvious connection with death instead of birth. But Goenawan’s touch is light; the theme blooms rather than hammers for the reader (no disrespect to the great Morrison, my idol). At the same time, renewal, or restitution, seems to be the desire of the narrator show more Shouji, who is forced to abandon his love Youko in the first 1/3 of the novel and spends the rest of the time yearning for and trying to reunite with her.

I’m often frustrated with one’s use of a prologue – why can’t the author simply make it a chapter? – but the prologue in this book (which details a prophecy given to a younger Shouji) is skillfully woven into the narrative in unexpected and pleasant ways. Really lovely to witness. There is also the idea of communication: newspaper articles of deaths and absences, letters lost or diverted or swiped, and, of course, the ear prostitutes. I did want more interiority/processing of events from Shouji. At times, particularly in the second half of the novel, Shouji would receive long-withheld news with little reaction or opinion, which felt somewhat anticlimactic. I wasn’t sure why the reader was being left out of his consciousness. Plus, the thread of Shouji-his father’s violence is too light. I wanted to know how that thread would play out, as it felt important to Shouji. But when he finally returns home, nothing seems to change internally.

Maybe that is just his function? Shouji is dealing with lingering grief, after all. This grief tends to keep him inactive, closed in on himself, at times unresponsive; and little wonder, after what he suffered in Akakawa. (Though I do think the women who love him let him off a bit too easily.) I sometimes felt that I was reading an aftermath novel, a narrative of post-trauma and aftershocks. The love stories are still endearing and had me smiling. The ending bruised me so. What is Goenawan saying about attempting acts of salvation (or sheathing the past with timidity/shame)? show less