Asako Serizawa
Autor von Inheritors
Werke von Asako Serizawa
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- Japan
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Auszeichnungen
Statistikseite
- Werke
- 2
- Mitglieder
- 114
- Beliebtheit
- #171,985
- Bewertung
- 3.8
- Rezensionen
- 5
- ISBNs
- 9
- Sprachen
- 1
When Serizawa focuses on characters, the writing is strong. Ayumi, for instance, is perceptively drawn in the first story slipping into dementia as an older woman while recalling staying behind in California as a teenager when her father left to return to Japan in 1913, staying with the slightly older son of a white landowner, a family friend and love interest. When America shut its borders in 1924 to Asians amidst rising anti-Japanese hostility, "she'd ceased to be Robert's romantic commitment and become instead his permanent liability."
Ayumi's brothers remain in Japan and feature in two of the most compelling stories. Sadao, a doctor, agreed to work in Japan's biological weapons and testing program during WWII, justifying it to himself as saving more Japanese lives than it would cost of enemy lives. After the war, he wrestles with how much guilt he should bear, versus those in authority who put him in that place. Annual reunions with a couple of fellow doctors don't help:
Guilt and choices made feature strongly again in Ayumi's youngest brother Masaharu's and his wife's story. Set in the post-surrender occupation of Japan, a subway ride leads to a fascinating conversation among strangers.
By the ninth story however, Serizawa shifts to focus more heavily on abstract philosophical questions about belonging, time, choices, and fate, which can seem like they would have been better as essays than fashioned into short stories. One leans heavily on an analysis of a Borges story, which is quite a shift from her earlier character-driven stories. The final two stories are set in an increasingly dystopian future and really have nothing to do with the specific Japanese perspective context of the previous stories, though they could be considered connected in philosophical theme. Unfortunately though I didn't find them greatly interesting.
The first 2/3 of the book is really excellent then, the last third I could have skipped.… (mehr)