Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki: I Loved It
A Story About Homes... Eventually Leaving Them... And The Memories Left Behind
Hello!!!
This is Joyie and welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet where I talk all things books!
This week I started my annual re-read of Wuthering Heights. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before, but I start reading WH on the 18th of April every year because that was the date I’d started reading the book the first time. It’s like my Wuthering Heights anniversary. And it was so satisfying because the weather was starting to get a little cloudy and windy for the past week, and on the evening of the 17th, we had a storm and I was like yes, set the mood please!
But I’m not here to talk about Wuthering Heights today. Today I’ll be talking about the book I finished last week: Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki.
I really loved this book. It’s a bit weird, I’ll admit. If I were to describe it in one line, I’d say it’s a story about homes, eventually leaving them, and the memories that remain.
It’s set around an apartment block in Tokyo, soon to be demolished. The main character, Taro, who currently lives in this block, has to move away when his contract ends in one year. The other tenants start to move one by one, leaving Taro and two other tenants the last ones remaining. One of those two tenants is a woman named Nishi, whom Taro notices taking a little too much interest in a house in the neighbourhood, a beautiful blue house with a garden.
As Taro and Nishi grow a little close, he finds out that she is an artist by profession, and her interest, bordering on obsession, in the house started long ago, when she saw it featured in a picture book named Spring Garden. In fact, the very reason she moved to this apartment block was to be close to that house.
When a new family moves to the blue house, Nishi constantly stalks them, and finally befriends the unsuspecting wife as a means to get into the house. She eventually gets to see pretty much all of the house, except for the bathroom, and asks for Taro’s help to get in there. Seeing her excitement (obsession), Taro, who usually goes through life not caring about anything, always choosing the least bothersome way out of everything, agrees to help her.
Much of this story is spent on seemingly unimportant musings, details that in hindsight don’t contribute anything meaningful to the plot. And yet, I really enjoyed it, there was a lingering sense of nostalgia throughout the book. There’s a part where Taro thinks about all the new apartment complexes being built all over Tokyo, when so many flats in the already existing apartments remain unoccupied. That part reminded me of the apartments I see while commuting to work—rows and rows of windows in large buildings, all pitch black. They make me feel uncomfortable in a weird way.
As I said, it’s a weird book. It doesn’t have a clear moving plot, the story doesn’t have any big resolution. But like many other Japanese stories and dramas and movies, the focus is more on the subtle changes that happen to the character, the fleeting moments, small closures and perspective shifts, which I personally really enjoy.
What about you? Have you read Spring Garden? Do you enjoy books that don’t have a clear moving plot? I'd love to hear about it!!!
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That’s it for today, I'll be back in your inbox next week.
Until then,
Joyie 🌻