Book - Goodbye Tsugumi

Goodbye Tsugumi
Banana Yoshimoto
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Product Description
An elegiac story of two young cousins coming of age at the Japanese seaside, Goodbye Tsugumi is an enchanting novel from one of Japan's finest writers. Banana Yoshimoto's novels have made her an international sensation. Now she returns with a magical, offbeat story of a deep and complicated friendship between two female cousins that ranks among her best work. Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled and occasionally cruel. Now Maria's father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a 'normal' family. When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love, and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi's inner strength and the real possibility of losing her.

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That was quite a fast read :)

This book was quite easy to read. The way I understood it, it is about people being misunderstood.

So, the premise is of two cousins, Maria and Tsugumi (and Tsugumi's elder sister Yoko). Maria had already left the coastal town to study in a University in Tokyo, but returned to the coastal town for the summer. And this story is mainly about that summer. How they spent that summer, a condensed, compact version of how their lives were before Maria left.

Tsugumi, frail, born with some unspecified sickness, would frequently be ill and can't do much strenuous and manual work. Beautiful, but a real bully, with a very foul mouth, when she chooses to be. Maria endures it all, since she understands Tsugumi and knows why she has suck kinds of thoughts.

For the most part of the book, it's pretty light-hearted, but it touches on some serious issues. Like, Tsugumi's vengence towards a dog-killer, although seemingly unnecessary, I was pretty impressed with what she did. It just shows that although she is nasty, has a foul mouth and likes to bully people around, all the nasty things that she'd done is just a front - she talks bad of the dogs, but in actually, she loves the dogs - enough to kill. And she is pretty smart too. I think her theory on how the dog was killed was spot on... but i had to smack myself because when she explained it, the first thought i had "it makes sense, why hadn't I thought of it?"

Personally, I think that the ending letter from Tsugumi shows how much she actually cherishes life and the things around her. Maybe that's not what it really is, but it's just the understanding I got from reading that part.

An enjoyable read.