Publisher's Weekly Review
Goenawan's well-paced mystery follows ruminative Japanese graduate student Ren Ishida as he returns to the town where his sister was murdered. When Keiko Ishida was found dead in the small town Akakawa, she had sustained stab wounds, had tie marks on her wrists, and was lying alongside a bloody kitchen knife-but nothing was missing from her purse and there's no known motive. She was also carrying a pack of birth control pills, though she'd been tight-lipped about her romantic life and never mentioned a boyfriend. Ren plans to stay just long enough to collect his sister's belongings, but is drawn into the town's morass when he temporarily takes over his sister's old teaching post at a cram school and agrees to fill her room in a politician's graveyard-quiet mansion (where he reads Rushdie to the politician's silent wife, Ms. Katou, in exchange for lodging). As Ren becomes invested in Ms. Katou's (and other townspeople's) backstories, he's also drawn into a beguiling friendship with one of his students-whom he nicknames "Seven Stars" for the brand of cigarettes she smokes-which gets increasingly thorny as he realizes she may be connected to his sister's troubled past. Goenawan's debut balances a finely wrought plot with patient, measured portraits of fragile relationships, making for a spare yet inviting novel that grabs hold and doesn't let go. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
When a Japanese graduate student's sister is violently murdered in a small town in rural Japan, he abandons his life and steps into her shoes to come to terms with her death.Ren Ishida has always admired his sister, Keiko, from afar. He grew up obsessing over her love life despite never having much of his own. He pursued the same major as her at universitya study of British and American literaturewith ambitions of becoming a teacher, just like her. But when Keiko is stabbed to death on the street in the small town she calls home, Ren is so guilt-ridden and grief-stricken that he travels to her town under the pretense of obtaining her ashes and finalizing her affairs but ends up moving into her home and replacing her as an English teacher at the local high school. Over the course of Ren's spiritual reconnection with his sister, he unwittingly uncovers the mystery behind her murder and unearths shocking family secrets in the process. Goenawan's debut proves to be a slow, soulful whodunit full of deadpan humor and whimsical narrative unpredictability in an attempt at a Murakami-esque aesthetic. Ren's barren, unreliable narration can be as hilarious as it is sad, and an interesting cast of charactersa girl in his class nicknamed Seven Stars, with whom he forms a taboo romantic entanglement that torments him; his friend and fellow teacher, Hondagives the novel a voice and world of its own. Goenawan unfortunately struggles with transitions between present action and flashback, and the novel falls victim to plot holes and linguistic clichs (an underage Seven Stars to Ren, while wearing her schoolgirl uniform: "Didn't you say age was only a number?").A witty, well-constructed debut that manages to overcome moments of clich. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Nearly finished with his graduate degree in English, Ren Ishida leaves Tokyo to retrieve his late sister's belongings from the small Japanese town where she had been teaching at a cram school. He is soon offered a job teaching her classes and the same rooming arrangement, where he could live in a wealthy man's house rent-free in exchange for reading to the owner's mute wife. At work, Ren becomes the object of a student's infatuation, a student who may hold the key to Ren's sister's death. Ren operates in a fog, moving between memories of his sister's struggle to protect him from their parents' constant fighting and neglect to the six-day work week that consumes nearly all of his time. Although it is his sister's seemingly random murder that initiates the action, this dreamlike novel is not a conventional murder mystery; its character-driven focus and introspective tone will attract literary-fiction readers.--Keefe, Karen Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Set in an imagined Tokyo suburb, -Goenawan's moving debut, a well-crafted literary mystery, features a younger brother coming of age after the murder of his beloved older sister. Given his remote, borderline abusive parents, Ren Ishida had naturally always felt closest to his doting sister, Keiko. When Keiko is brutally murdered in the quiet town of Akakawa, where she worked as a high school teacher, a grief-stricken Ren travels there to settle her affairs. As he begins to look into her unsolved murder, Ren uncovers the shocking cause of their tense family dynamics and learns that his sister was, in many ways, a stranger to him. David Shih's tempered narration perfectly matches the deliberate, sparse prose, introspective feel, and slow unraveling of the events in this suspenseful, character-driven novel. He also expertly gives voice to -Goenawan's quirky cast of characters ranging from a love-struck teenage girl to a stuffy local male politician to a ghostly Keiko as imagined by Ren. VERDICT Highly recommended for both literary fiction and mystery collections. ["In a genre-bending novel about family and loss that shifts from a murder mystery to magical realism, -Goenawan infuses her postmodern tale with enough complexity, suspense, and emotional connection to make it memorable and haunting": LJ 2/15/18 starred review of the Soho hc.]-Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
1 She Crumbled and Turned to Ashes At first, nothing was unusual. I was on the phone with my sister. She sat at her desk by the window in her rented room in Akakawa. The sun shone through the curtain, casting brown highlights on her long dark hair. She asked me question after question, but I just mumbled one-word answers, impatient for the conversation to be over. But then, before my eyes, she crumbled and turned to ashes. I woke up in a black sedan; the dream would have slipped from my mind, had it not been for the white porcelain urn in my lap. Resembling a short cylindrical vase, it was decorated with a painting of a flying cuckoo and chrysanthemums. Inside were the ashes of my sister, Keiko Ishida, who had been only thirty-three when she died. I loosened my tie and asked Honda, "How much longer?" He turned the steering wheel. "Almost there." "Mind putting on some music?" "Of course not," he answered, flicking a button. The radio played Billie Holiday's "Summertime." For a Friday afternoon, the journey was smooth. The sun was high, no traffic jam in sight. Even the music was relaxing, the kind meant to make you drum your fingers to the beat. My hands tightened involuntarily around the urn, and I stared at it. Honda glanced at me for a second before turning his eyes back to the road. "Keiko used to love jazz," he said. I nodded, unable to speak. The small stack of cassettes that made up her collection--what would happen to them now? "The funny thing was, she couldn't name a single jazz musician," he continued. I cleared my throat. "You don't need to be knowledgeable to appreciate jazz." "Well said, Ishida." Actually, it was my sister who had first spoken those words to me. Even now, I could picture her sitting at her desk, her hand twisting the phone cord. A self-satisfied smile on her face as she murmured, "You don't need to be knowledgeable to appreciate jazz." Strange that this image was etched in my mind, though I'd never seen her rented room--I had no idea what it looked like. "We're here," Honda said as the car pulled up to the entrance of the Katsuragi Hotel. "Thank you for your help arranging the memorial service," I said. "Don't mention it. Keiko's done a lot for me in the past." I nodded and got out, still clutching the urn. I was already heading through the entrance when I heard him call after me. "Ishida." I turned. Honda had already wound down the passenger window. "What are you going to do with . . . ?" He scratched the back of his neck, looking at the urn. "I haven't decided yet." "If you want the ashes scattered at sea, we can ask the crematorium staff. They'll handle it for a small fee." "That won't do," I said. "My sister was afraid of water. She couldn't swim." Honda and my sister had taught at the same cram school. It was he who had arranged my accommodations. "It's sparsely furnished, but cheap and livable," he had said, a completely accurate description. A queen-sized bed, a small television, a wardrobe, and a dressing table with matching chair--that was all. The furniture was dated but functional. Relatively clean, the room had an en-suite bathroom and a slightly musty odor. I placed the urn on the dressing table and looked at my watch. It was two-thirty, so I had an hour to make my way to the police station. I took off my suit and left it hanging over the back of the chair. I needed to shower, to wash away the smell of the funeral incense. Sliding the bathroom door, I glanced at the dressing table. The urn stood there silently. I arrived at the police station to find a lone young officer manning the counter. I was the only visitor. When I gave the man my name, he stood to open the office door. "Follow me," he said, and I did, surprised he would leave the counter unattended. The officer led me down a cramped corridor and gestured for me to enter a room on the right. I knocked on the door twice, took a deep breath, and turned the knob. "Excuse me," I said. A middle-aged man sat behind a desk piled high with folders. His hair was thinning, and he wore a faded black suit over a crumpled white shirt. For a police officer, the man dressed sloppily. The room we were in was windowless and smaller than I'd expected. Perhaps it was designed to make visitors feel claustrophobic. The desk ran from wall to wall, dividing the office in two. I wondered how the officer managed to get to his chair each morning. Did he climb over the desk, or crawl underneath it? He looked at me. "Mr. Ren Ishida?" "Yes." "Please, have a seat." He motioned to the two empty chairs in front of the desk. "I'm sorry for what happened to Miss Keiko Ishida. This must be a difficult time for you and your family." He shifted the folders over to one side and handed me his business card. "I'm in charge of Miss Ishida's case. You can call me Oda." I nodded and read the card: hidetoshi oda, senior detective. "Mr. Ishida, I need you to tell me as much information as you can." He took out a tape recorder. "May we proceed?" "Yes." The detective pressed the record button, looked at his watch, and began a well-rehearsed script. He gave the time, date, and location of the interview before introducing himself and me. I confirmed my identity, and he started with the official interview. "Tell me about your sister," he said. "Were you two close?" "I suppose so. She called at least once a week," I answered. "When was the last time you spoke to her?" "Last Monday." He turned his table calendar to face me. "That would have been the sixth of June?" "Yes." "June 6, 1994," he muttered into the tape recorder. "And what did you talk about?" I stared at the blank wall behind him. "Nothing much, just the usual stuff." "Can you be more specific?" I took a moment to recall our last conversation. What had we talked about? Yes, of course. We'd talked about my date. "Did you go out with Nae this weekend?" my sister asked. "Uh-huh," I answered. "The obligatory Saturday night date." "Where did you go?" "An Italian restaurant." "The fine dining kind?" "I guess it counts as one." "Really?" she exclaimed. "I wasn't aware you had such refined taste." "It was Nae's idea, not mine. She learned about it from a fashion magazine." "Was it good?" I snickered. "Far from it." "What happened?" Where should I start? "Service was slow, the pasta was bland, and it was expensive. I should have known what to expect when taking restaurant recommendations from a fashion magazine." She laughed. "Are you sure your expectations weren't too high?" "Trust me," I said, "it was bad." "And where did you go after that?" I paused. "Nowhere." "What?" She raised her voice. "That was all?" "Yes." I echoed, "That was all." "Are you for real?" "Is it me, or do you sound disappointed?" "I am disappointed," she said. "You're so boring for someone so young." "Don't talk like you're an old woman. We're only nine years apart. Anyway, what were you expecting?" "People your age would usually go for a romantic walk after dinner. Or are you withholding the best part from me?" "Sorry to disappoint you again, but she went straight home." I wasn't lying, but that was only part of the story. Nae and I had had an argument during dinner. To be fair, I was already in a bad mood. The restaurant's lackluster food and poor service made it worse. So when Nae kept pressing me with questions about my future plans-- our future plans, according to her--I became agitated. "You're so desperate to get married," I said. "Are you afraid you're going to be the only one left on the shelf?" I realized I'd gone too far when she stood and grabbed her bag. She hadn't even touched her main course. "Don't expect me to talk to you again until you've apologized," she said before storming out. I sighed. Nae was stubborn. She would carry out her threat, but that was fine. I needed a break. Lately, all of our conversations were about marriage, even though I'd told her I wasn't ready. A little distance could be a good thing. I left the restaurant soon after she did. On my way to the train station, I saw a bar across the street. I went in and ordered a beer. A woman took the empty seat next to me. We started talking, and I ended up having more drinks than I intended to. She was attractive enough, though I believe the alcohol and dim lighting played a part. One thing led to another, and I found myself in the bed of her upscale studio apartment. After we were done, she drifted off to sleep while I showered. The last train had gone, so I stayed for the night. She was still sound asleep when I woke up around four in the morning. Not wanting to get any more involved with her, I left quietly. Of course, I didn't share any of this with my sister. She would've asked about the woman, and I hardly remembered her face, let alone her name. We had talked for hours, but the memories had evaporated. The only thing I remembered was that she had a tiny mole at the nape of her neck. "Ren, why so quiet?" my sister asked. "I'm tired," I lied. She continued as if she hadn't heard me. "But you like Italian food, don't you? I remember you used to polish off the spaghetti Bolognese I would make." "I only like it if it's done well." "I know a good Italian place. It's not fancy like the one you went to--just a small, homey eatery run by an elderly couple. I'll take you there when you come to Akakawa. It's outside of town, but worth the trip." I smiled, sensing her excitement. "All right," I said, and that was the last time we spoke. Excerpted from Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.