Harare Review of Books

208 pages.

First published on July 25, 2023 (Counterpoint)

Fiction.

Through a Kafkaesque conceit—A woman turns into a forest— Maru Ayase tells the story of a Japanese writer, Nowatari Tetsuya, who uses first his lover, Yuko, and then his wife, Rui, as “inspiration” for his literary protagonists. The novel explores the assigned and assumed roles of men and women and people’s responsibilities towards each other through Nowatari’s relationships, Rui’s transformation, and through the stories of the supporting characters: the agents from the author’s publishing house, particularly the differing responses of the man and the woman to what they find at the Nowatari’s house; through Nowatari’s lover, and in her self-erasure in the relationship; and in Rui’s family’s response to his courting her.

Why did Rui (and there’s an interesting side note on the names of Nowatari’s wife Rui, and his lover Yuko) turn into a forest, and what is her husband’s response to this? These are the main questions of the novel. When a man uses intimate details of your relationship in his art, are you his muse, or is he just using you?

If you read “Cat Person” and Me and Bad Art Friend, and came away with musings about the personal rights of muses, this book wants to explore some of those ideas with you.

This is another wonderful and thoughtful entry into the canon of translated works of Japanese surrealist fiction, and an excellent read on gender dynamics in general, and Japanese society in particular. Thank you to Counterpoint for this ARC.