Moonlight Shadow Blurb: The novella tells the story of a young woman, Satsuki, coming to terms with the death of her boyfriend, Hitoshi, in a car accident and her friendship with her boyfriend's brother, Hiiragi, whose girlfriend, Yumiko, also died in the same accident.
Apoorva
Moonlight Shadow when I started I didn’t expect it to be so emotionally rich. It engrosses the reader into the world of Satsuki in just the first few paragraphs.
Satsuki and her friend are dealing with untimely and sudden death of their loved ones. Writing is so beautiful that no words are heavy, no sentences are long and complex. The story depicts love, loss, guilt, and how the characters deal with them. The story leaves the reader not with depressing and heavy feelings but a hopeful, warm, and enlightening feeling. All the characters are beautifully created. The story feels very personal and close to our hearts.
Nidhi
I was a silent spectator in the discussion on this story and read the story today only. It was a simple touching heartwarming story and it was so engaging that I had to steal time in my office to complete it. Most of the points have already been dealt with by fellow readers, the highlight I want to share of my experience was during the last few pages, when it says " The Bell", she could hear the bell and the goosebumps I had were so unexpected, from head to toe, I could feel and still reeling under the same. Maybe it reflects on the point that one's emotions, feelings, and reactions manage to catch you by surprise and are beyond one's age or reckoning. Thanks for introducing us to this beautiful writing.
Shreela
It's a beautiful story which is about loss, & more importantly, dealing with loss.
At first, it made me remember Norwegian Woods, because of the theme, & also because of being set in Japan & being about high schoolers. However, it is an injustice to the book to consider it in comparison to another book.
The story is simple, & the telling is simple, while the repercussions on the main protagonist are as complex as they're hurting. The reader wonders whether the main protagonist is simply grieving or falling into clinical depression, & that honestly, is the situation of a lot of people after loss. The description used in the writing is visceral, & very real. It's an honest narrative about the struggle through every single ordinary mundane day.
This is very balanced writing, never trivializing pain & grief, yet encouraging the main protagonist to go on despite excruciating pain & accept the truth (yes, the story itself feels like a character in the life of the main protagonist... & in some ways, it is so... because the event is today more important in her life than anyone... . & that situation may change in future, but the incident & the story before it.. is the biggest "presence" in her life"now".) & ... the story encourages the main protagonist to hang on.
There is no plot as such, but the book has so much soul & this has to be acknowledged to the translator to bring it to us.
Happy Reading!
If you’ve read Moonlight Shadow by Banana Yoshimoto, tell us your opinion in the comments.