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The most jarringly conflicted love triangles are like submerged icebergs - submerged in their tenderly buried mysteries. So it is with this minor masterpiece!
I say minor, for it struck me as such as I began reading it, years ago. And yet? And yet it had indelibly marked itself ‘Read me.’ I had a falling-out with a female friend on Goodreads, for her friendship seemed murky - though my reluctance to accelerate onwards must have reminded me of the impossible triangle in Sartre’s No Exit.
I then abandoned it out of hidebound stodginess.
Such is the way I was.
But that man I am no more. Picking it up again I am reminded of the part where Sumire teaches Miu to relish fine wine. And this book is fine wine. Not the costliest, perhaps, but a wine in which I could now see true potential!
Miu’s long silence is so much like mine, stuck in my long transformational cocoon. She is the Sputnik Sweetheart of the remainder of the male and female make-love-not-war triangle, Sumire and H, resisting all the while their earthy gravity.
As I, less fortunately, was the Boy who Fell from the Sky.
I was about to change, sensibly, and do an about-face.
***
And that is key for me - for life for Miu, with whom I always identified - is changing, as I did. I became quiet, taciturn, at odds with my other half, but not my better half. My other half was confused. It has taken me fifty years to dump my confused other self where it belonged.
Into Mount Doom.
Now 75, I am starting to be free of my emotional luggage. But it’s no loss - it was Dark and affective, the source of my angst.
***
This is a wonderfully mysterious book about childhood innocence - lost - and found.
It’s true Miu by the end has irrevocably lost her affective half, like me.
She’s lost her sorrow and her joy. (We were told she is an Older Woman. She now has removed her hair dye from her streaming white hair.)
Last we see of her, she’s cruising effortlessly in her sports car.
She has lost her anxiety, and she rides the wave unencumbered.
And finally, her victorious side, like mine - our Better side - is FREE.
I say minor, for it struck me as such as I began reading it, years ago. And yet? And yet it had indelibly marked itself ‘Read me.’ I had a falling-out with a female friend on Goodreads, for her friendship seemed murky - though my reluctance to accelerate onwards must have reminded me of the impossible triangle in Sartre’s No Exit.
I then abandoned it out of hidebound stodginess.
Such is the way I was.
But that man I am no more. Picking it up again I am reminded of the part where Sumire teaches Miu to relish fine wine. And this book is fine wine. Not the costliest, perhaps, but a wine in which I could now see true potential!
Miu’s long silence is so much like mine, stuck in my long transformational cocoon. She is the Sputnik Sweetheart of the remainder of the male and female make-love-not-war triangle, Sumire and H, resisting all the while their earthy gravity.
As I, less fortunately, was the Boy who Fell from the Sky.
I was about to change, sensibly, and do an about-face.
***
And that is key for me - for life for Miu, with whom I always identified - is changing, as I did. I became quiet, taciturn, at odds with my other half, but not my better half. My other half was confused. It has taken me fifty years to dump my confused other self where it belonged.
Into Mount Doom.
Now 75, I am starting to be free of my emotional luggage. But it’s no loss - it was Dark and affective, the source of my angst.
***
This is a wonderfully mysterious book about childhood innocence - lost - and found.
It’s true Miu by the end has irrevocably lost her affective half, like me.
She’s lost her sorrow and her joy. (We were told she is an Older Woman. She now has removed her hair dye from her streaming white hair.)
Last we see of her, she’s cruising effortlessly in her sports car.
She has lost her anxiety, and she rides the wave unencumbered.
And finally, her victorious side, like mine - our Better side - is FREE.
