An I-Novel

An I-Novel was originally published in Japanese, and is the author’s introspective look at growing up in the US after her father is transferred there when she is 12. The novel in its original form, is scattered throughout with random English words and phrases that fit in with the conversations or storyline and that the author felt her audience would easily understand, but in translated form, especially English, the translator chose to use a different font to notate these words or phrases.The novel itself doesn’t really have a plot per se, which is interesting because the author describes the novels of Japanese authors that she read growing up the same way. It’s more of her thoughts and conversations put on paper, resulting in us getting an idea of what it was like for a young Japanese girl to arrive in New York in the 1960’s and spend the next 20 years living in America, trying to fit in but at the same time trying to maintain her Japanese-ness, and realizing that the two will never co-exist. At the same time we meet her sister Nanae, who basically did the opposite. We all go through the internal struggle of “who am I?”, but Minae had to do it in a different country and with a different language which were polar opposites of each other.I felt a lot of empathy for Minae. As a student at Uni in Japan in the 1980’s, a lot of the same situations she described, I encountered too. There is something different about living in a foreign country for years as a resident vice just visiting. Ultimately, regardless of where you are born, or where you grow up, we all just want to be accepted for who we are and not have to fit in some box of someone else’s design.Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author and translated for an ARC in return for a fair and honest review.

An I-Novel, by Minae Mizumura and translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, is a moving novel that takes place over the course of one day but takes us through the years of the semi-fictional Minae's life.After I finished this novel I tried to figure out what exactly made it so impactful for me. I am not a woman, I am not an expat living in a different culture, I am no longer young nor any longer a grad student. A certain amount of why it moved me is the basic idea of empathy and relating as well as one can to a character, any character. What I think put this into the exceptional area for me is that even though the events portrayed, both on the day of the novel and throughout Minae's life, were not immediately relatable for me, Mizumura conveyed the basic human feelings underlying these events so well that I could relate in that way. It wasn't just an expat's loneliness, it was a human loneliness. And so on for the spectrum of emotions I felt.I won't repeat the history of either the I-novel form in Japanese literature or the dual-language aspect of the original novel. Those things are discussed in most of the book blurbs and, if you're like me, you'll look up more information about I-novels before starting this one. Doing that extra little bit of work does help to make this an even more impressive work, but certainly isn't necessary to enjoy the book.I don't know Japanese and so never read the original, so I can't speak to the quality of the translation beyond acknowledging that it worked for me. That alone makes it a success to some degree. My understanding from the one person I know who read the original and this translation is that it is impressive, so I will go with that.I highly recommend this to readers who like to explore that area where the minutiae of everyday life meets the lifelong arcs of a character's, and by extension our own, life. This is not action packed, but you will definitely have made a journey once you complete this book.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

This could have been great had the editor shortened it by some sixty pages. As it is, interesting insights take turns with dragged-out passages where the two sisters are chatting about nothing at all. As much as I liked some passages, I wish the writing here had more discipline and concern for universality.

Gorgeous book, written deep from the heart with lots of insight into family relationships, language, and the human psyche. Highly recommend.