Staff Pick
Takeru, a withdrawn 10-year-old boy, is taken in by a family member in a small coastal village. The adult reader recognizes a traumatized child, but Takeru's past experience is never directly revealed. Poverty, hunger, and abandonment are relayed only through the disjointed way of memory, where sought images dance alongside bewildering flashes of violence and depravity. Is it his need of solace, or a desire for kinship and understanding, that seeks and finds respite in a ghostly ancestral guardian? An achingly beautiful book: poignant, mysterious, and profoundly affecting. Recommended By Lori M., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
By the winner of the Akatugawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award
How does a shy, traumatized boy overcome the shame, anger, and sadness that silence him?
In Lion Cross Point, celebrated Japanese author Masatsugu Ono turns his gentle pen to the mind of ten-year-old Takeru, who arrives at his family’s home village amid a scorching summer, carrying memories of unspeakable acts against his mother and brother. As Takeru befriends Mitsuko, his new caretaker, and Saki, his spunky neighbor, he meets more of his mother’s old friends, discovering her history and inching toward a new idea of family and home. All the while he begins to see a strange figure called Bunji — the same name as a delicate young boy who mysteriously vanished long ago on the village’s breathtaking coastline at Lion Cross Point.
At once a subtle portrayal of a child’s sense of memory and community, an empowering exploration of how we find the words to encompass our trauma, and a spooky Japanese ghost story, Lion Cross Point is gripping and poignant, reminiscent of Kenzaburō Ōe’s best work. Acts of heartless brutality mix with surprising moments of pure kindness, creating this utterly truthful, cathartic tale of an unforgettable young boy.
Review
"Masatsugu Ono’s lucid, spare novel explores the question: What is finally more mysterious than family? It is not the unraveling of a mystery, but the tangible evocation of mystery itself as it rises from anecdotes and intuitions, from the layering of the innuendos of memory with the overtones and undertones of dream and seascape, that distinguishes this hauntingly written and beautifully translated book." Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago
Review
"Masatsugu Ono’s work vibrates with the sounds of voices whose meaning has yet to be discovered. In Lion Cross Point, even those who have been deprived of their voice find their place among us." Yoko Tawada, author of Memoirs of a Polar Bear
Review
"Masatsugu Ono, one of the most important Japanese novelists of the post-Murakami generation, has created a lyrical, psychologically astute novel that will only whet international appetites for more of his work." Jeffrey Angles, 2017 Yomiuri Prize recipient
Review
"This is a book of the first order. A haunting mystery, it is about parents and children, about war and peace. Surely this book means that Masatsugu Ono belongs in the first ranks of not just Japanese literature but world literature." Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life
Synopsis
A "Book You Should Read This April" at Literary Hub By the winner of the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award
How does a shy, traumatized boy overcome the shame, anger, and sadness that silence him? In Lion Cross Point, celebrated Japanese author Masatsugu Ono turns his gentle pen to the mind of ten-year-old Takeru, who arrives at his family's home village amid a scorching summer, carrying memories of unspeakable acts against his mother and brother. As Takeru befriends Mitsuko, his new caretaker, and Saki, his spunky neighbor, he meets more of his mother's old friends, discovering her history and inching toward a new idea of family and home. All the while he begins to see a strange figure called Bunji--the same name as a delicate young boy who mysteriously vanished long ago on the village's breathtaking coastline at Lion Cross Point. At once a subtle portrayal of a child's sense of memory and community, an empowering exploration of how we find the words to encompass our trauma, and a spooky Japanese ghost story, Lion Cross Point is gripping and poignant, reminiscent of Kenzaburō Ōe's best work. Acts of heartless brutality mix with surprising moments of pure kindness, creating this utterly truthful, cathartic tale of an unforgettable young boy.
About the Author
Masatsugu Ono is the author of numerous novels, including Mizu ni umoreru haka (The Water-Covered Grave), which won the Asahi Award for New Writers, and Nigiyakana wan ni seowareta fune (Boat on a Choppy Bay), which won the Mishima Prize. A prolific translator from the French — including works by Èdouard Glissant and Marie NDiaye — Ono received the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s highest literary honor, in 2015. He lives in Tokyo.
Angus Turvill is an award-winning translator whose work includes Ekuni Kaori and Ikezawa Natsuki (Shizuoka Translation Competition Grand Prize), Inoue Hisashi and Kuroda Natsuko, Dazai Osamu, and the experimental Japanese poet Nomura Kiwao.