The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

Published in Japanese in 2005; published in translation by Melville House on May 3, 2011

Having often seen each other through their apartment windows, Chihiro and Nakajima meet and become friends, bonding over their grief for their deceased mothers. The friendship evolves into something more, although the precise nature of their relationship is something Chihiro can't quite define, even after they are living together. Nakajima is tormented by the pain of something in his past. He eventually asks Chihiro to accompany him on a visit to Mino and Chii, strange siblings who live on a lake. Chii is bedridden; she speaks through Mino, who channels her voice through an apparent telepathic connection. Meanwhile, Chihiro is painting a mural on a wall that may be torn down. Her relationship with Nakajima has the same risk of impermanence as he contemplates applying for a research position in Paris. Eventually we learn a defining secret about Nakajima's past and the nature of his relationship with Mino and Chii.

To some extent, The Lake is about the nature of perception and illusion. Chihiro recognizes that "we keep our gazes fixed, day after day, on the things we want to see" while averting our attention from life's ugliness. Nakajima isn't like that; he sees the world as it is, all of it, and his perception of reality forces Chihiro to do the same: she is "awed by his terrible depths." Nakajima has survived a harrowing ordeal, the details of which are only sketchily revealed for much of the novel. The Lake isn't so much about what happened to Nakajima or even how his life has been affected by it (he tells his story only in the story's final pages); the focus is on Chihiro's response to Nakajima both before and after she learns the truth.

If you're craving a plot-driven story that's filled with dramatic tension, this isn't the novel for you. A good bit of The Lake consists of Chihiro's introspection, her thoughts about her art, her goals, her parents, her personal growth. More importantly, The Lake is an internal examination of a heart. Chihiro analyzes her emotions, strips away superficiality, constructs a detailed understanding of her feelings about Nakajima. Her analysis changes from moment to moment as she reevaluates her emotions and redefines love. Chihiro compares Nakajima's relationship with his mother to her own memories of a mother who worked as a Mama-san in a bar. All of this is interesting, even illuminating, but at the same time so strange that it didn't entirely resonate with me. My sense of detachment from the narrative continued to grow as I continued to read.

In the end, I'm not quite sure I understand what Banana Yoshimoto was trying to do in The Lake. It's about the difficulty (and necessity) of opening your heart but there's more to it than that. It can be read as a simple love story about two "ridiculously fragile people," as Chihiro suggests, but I don't see Chihiro as fragile. If anything, she's emblematic of the strength that arises from goodness and compassion. To an extent, Yoshimoto is exploring love that germinates from mutual dependence rather than physical desire, or love as a healing force. The character of Chii gives the narrative a supernatural quality that seems out of place with the rest of the story; I'm not quite sure why she's there.

Ultimately, The Lake didn't quite work for me, but it worked well enough. I admire the intensity of the narrative and the way Yoshimoto captures the essence of her characters in just a few words. Of Mino she writes: "He was quiet in the way people are when they believe the world would get along just fine without them." Sentences like that kept me reading even if I didn't fully engage with the larger points Yoshimoto intended to make.

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