Cover Image: Territory of Light

Territory of Light

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Member Reviews

Territory of Light occupies small, liminal spaces: the threshold of apartments, the strange, uncertain time between marriage and divorce, the blur among memories, dreams, and reality. In each of the 12 vignettes, the theme of transition is clear. First, as a literal transition of space, our unnamed narrator moves into a new apartment with her 3 year old daughter in the first year of separation from her husband. The apartment begins much like the woman’s new life; it’s full of light coming in at every angle, filling the small space with hope and opportunity. As time progresses and the stress of being a single mother and a woman going through divorce in Japan begin to weigh on her, so too the space transforms. Mesh is placed over the windows in the idyllic apartment after an incident with her daughter and some neighbors, which filters the light coming in. The apartment, too, becomes more claustrophobic as the woman struggles with working full-time and being a single parent. Her temper rises and her patience wears thin with her daughter, both beginning to feel trapped by each other and the space they occupy.

It’s also a transition of time, the nebulous, undefined time between marriage and divorce. Staff at the daycare center push for answers the woman can’t give: are you divorced or not? Is the father in your daughter’s life or not? As she is pushed more and more, she retaliates, pulls back, and her isolation only grows. Vivid dreams blur the lines between her present time and her memories of the past.

She’s not always the most sympathetic of characters, but she is very real in a raw and vulnerable way. She lashes out at her daughter, she has a short-lived affair, a night of drunkenness. Her cycles of isolation and desperation make her at times questionably reliable as a narrator. Yet glimmers of hope and of light, though maybe a different light, exist beyond, after moving through these liminal spaces. After an aimless train ride to the coast, she calls her daughter to share what she sees: "It's a ship, like you and I should be on."

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I really enjoyed this read! Such a heartwarming book with breathtaking writing. I would definitely recommend!

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A good one for readers who are particularly keen on the slice-of-life type of fiction. Intensively character-driven, the narrative brings us in a difficult the protagonist has to endure. We are in a sort of contemplation of the main character's life, where the prose is very atmospheric. It also goes into feminism and the critics and difficulties of a woman going through a separation and a divorce, and the challenges of motherhood. The character is not always having good days, and she's sometimes making some bad decisions, yet it's written without fear nor judgment, but only with a sort of melancholy and, again, contemplation.

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When I read Territory of Light it seemed very repetitive and bleak. It takes place in Tokyo and is about woman who is left by her husband to raise alone their young daughter. At first things are going well and quickly it all comes crashing down. The daughter is missing her father and the mother finds her new life complicated and stifling. The parts with the Husband were creepy and frustrating.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance eARC.

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A woman in Tokyo is left by her husband, alone she must raise her two year old daughter. There are twelve segments, and each covers a glimpse into their lives. They find an apartment, she still needs to work do her daughter attends daycare. We are privy to her personal thoughts as she draws us into their lives. She loses her temper, she gets depressed, wondering how she can go on, keep doing all she is doing. Her husband shows up at the unlikliest of times, though he is living with another woman, he still refuses to leave them alone. This novel is about the struggle for women to make a new life for themselves when they still have responsibilities and feeling from the old. It is simply about life.

The writing is spare, elegant, and it lifts the novel from the mundane. It is a short book, but a beautifully done one.

"I could not conclude that every sheet in the pack of origami paper I had bought my daughter a few days earlier had floated down, need after the other, taking its time and enjoying the breeze, onto the tiled roof below. I pictured a small hand plucking one square at a time from the pack. My daughter, who had just turned three, would have been laughing out loud with pleasure as she watched the different colors waiting down."

One of the delightful images within.

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A young, newly single woman struggles to raise her three-year-old daughter in Tokyo in Yūko Tsushima’s Territory of Light, an empathetic and compelling look at single motherhood.

Following a break with her husband, the nameless narrator was not prepared to be on her own and at times is not up to the task. She struggles with work, raising her child, her temper, alcohol and managing basic home chores. Through it all she begins to question her own goals and her qualities as a mother. But, though she may not realize it, during this first year of being alone she is rebuilding the foundation of her life.

Originally written as 12 serialized stories for a Japanese magazine in 1978 and ’79, and now translated to English by Geraldine Harcourt, the novella Territory of Light (digital galley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) moves at a leisurely pace, often revisiting the same themes. But the vignettes blend nicely together and the repeating themes add a sort of elegant, poetic structure to the story.

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Did not finish this book. It just wasn't for me. I didn't bond with the main character and wasn't compelled to finish the book.

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Published in Japan in 1993; published in translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 12, 2019

Territory of Light is a short novel set in the mid-1970s that covers one year in the life of a woman whose husband unexpectedly announces his separation from her life. The unnamed narrator has always considered herself a loser, and her husband’s decision to leave her alone with their daughter does nothing to improve her self-esteem. After an initial period of denial, confident of her husband’s return, she is jolted to reality by a poem that begins “Give up this idle pondering” and thinks about moving forward with her life. Yet many people tell her that women never get a better deal by divorcing, and that the quality of men she will meet will steadily decline. Society erects a barrier to the woman’s progress, and presumably to the progress of all divorcing women of that era in Japan.

Moving forward is hampered by the reality that the narrator isn’t much of a mother. She gives her daughter minimal attention. At least once, she leaves her kid home in bed while she goes out to get drunk. She drinks before sleeping in the hope that her daughter’s crying during the night won’t wake her up. She blames her daughter for problems of her own making. She is obviously suffering from depression and hasn’t figured out how to cope with it. It isn’t surprising that the daughter would like to live with her father, but he has a new woman and only wants to see his daughter for short periods, if at all, although he criticizes his wife’s parenting (with some justification, apart from his hypocrisy). Predictably, given her parenting, the kid has turned into a destructive brat.

The narrator spends a good bit of time (too much in my view) discussing her morbid dreams and the funerals she passes in her daily travels. All the death she witnesses or imagines or dreams about eventually causes an epiphany. Since that epiphany is probably the novel’s point, I won’t spoil it by revealing it. I will only say that, as revelations go, this one struck me as a strange way to look at life. Still, there is no right or wrong way to look at life, and other readers might find the epiphany to be inspirational.

The narrator has a good bit of anxiety about raising a child on her own, particularly when she hears stories of parenting gone wrong. She often has libidinous dreams and wonders why she never dreams of hugging her child. Stories like this make it possible for readers to understand the emotional impact of domestic drama in a culture that they haven’t experienced, but I often found myself cringing at the narrator’s self-pity rather than developing empathy for her struggle. A novel like this should make me understand the protagonist, but I became ever more perplexed by her behaviors and attitudes as the year in her life unfolded.

I suspect that this is a book that appeals to Japanese divorcing mothers. Perhaps it appeals to other readers because they empathize with Japanese divorcing mothers who dealt with cultural burdens that were in place fifty years ago. It might appeal to fans of bleakness, whether or not they are Japanese. Yuko Tsushima’s prose is often elegant without quite becoming pretentious, and the protagonist’s character is developed in detail, so the novel has literary value. I can’t recommend Territory of Light without reservations because the novel did little for me, but I can recommend it with reservations because I can understand why it might speak to other readers.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

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3.5 stars

This review is based on an ARC of Territory of Light which I received courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher (Farrar Straus & Giroux).

Territory of Light is the story of a newly single mother and her toddler living together alone for the first time, and the struggles (mentally and socially) that ensue. I really loved the setting and the strong sense of Japanese culture present in this novel; in fact, I'd say that it was easily my favorite aspect.

Although this book had wonderful flow-of-conscious type writing and was an easy, light read, it left me wanting a little something more--more of what, I'm not sure. There was not much drama or climax or, no real intrigue. This didn't bother me so much because the book was so short, but if it were a longer novel I would have begun to lose interest.

Overall a good read and something worth checking out if you're into books set in Japan or featuring Japanese characters.

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The resemblance with Kazuo Kamimura "The Rikon Club" is impressive and makes you thing how much had suffered those poor divorced japanese women during the '70.

Honestly, I found it moving and graceful, one of the very last example of "old" modern japanese narrative, written just before the two Murakami's changed japanese literature forever (not sure for the better).

I highly recommended this and Dandelions by Kawabata in both my reviews. It's fantastic that we can finally read those two beautiful novels in english translation and it's such a shame that Italian readers who are not able to read in it have to wait for a translation that probably won't be made anytime soon.

Thanks to let me read this in advance.

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This slim collection of vignettes was originally published in serial format in Japan in 1978-1979. While it's an interesting concept- a woman coping with major change in her life and struggling to raise her 2 year old daughter- it feels more poetic than narrative. There are some lovely descriptions of light (hence the title). Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Worth a read to experience Tsushima.

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[ 2.5 stars ]

Nothing special. It left me with more questions I would have liked to have after reading it.
A really simple story.

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Territory of Light, originally published in Japanese in the late 1970s, withstands the test of time. Providing a glimpse into single motherhood in Japan, Yuko Tsushima's novel shows us that, beneath cultural stoicism, the emotions felt by parents shifting from one marital status to another are universal.

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I was fascinated by this quietly told, subtle tale about control and the demand to function. When a young woman is left by her husband, she becomes the only provider for her 2-year-old daughter and has to juggle numerous, often contradictory expectations: She has to hold down her job at a library where she is expected to perform her tasks no matter what happens in her private life, she has to find her own way of being a single mother while defending herself against the ideas others - the employees at her daughter's day care center, her ex-husband, neighbours, strangers - impose upon her, and she has to develop her identity as a young woman living apart from her husband in hectic Tokyo. Some demands she is confronted with are reasonable, even if it is hard for her to live up to them, while others seem like misogynistic strategies to put pressure upon her - it's this complicated web the protagonist gets entangled in, always juxtaposed with the impulsive emotions of a small child who doesn't know about the constraints of the grown-up world yet, that makes this text so captivating.

While all of this makes for a dramatic tale (that these things happen to many people doesn't mean that they aren't profound personal crises), Tsushima finds a meditative language to tell the story from the woman's perspective. Descriptions are provided in a way that allows the reader to draw his own conclusions. For instance, we learn about the ex-husband (who says he cannot afford to pay child support) that "he didn't want to let people down by abandoning his dreams of making a movie and creating a small theatre company." No further judgement necessary - this is excellent writing. The whole book is infused with symbolism of light and darkness, which gives the rather sober voice of the first-person narrator an additional dimension.

Originally, the short novella was published in twelve installments in a Japanese magazine (1978-79), representing the timeframe of twelve months over which we follow the protagonist and her daughter. Fortunately, there is a lot more of Tsushima's writing to translate and discover - I'm glad that recently, Japanese literature has gained a lot of international attention, because this country has so many fantastic authors that deserve to be read.

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While there were some meaningful concepts, overall I did not care for the story. Honestly, it's just not my type of reading.

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A spare meditation on motherhood and growth. Stylistically fragmented and distinctively plotted. Full review forthcoming in February on BookBrowse.

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I enjoyed Territory of Light and found it sufficiently absorbing, but now I'm finding that I don't have a whole lot to say about it. It's a simple story about motherhood told from the perspective of a newly single woman coming to terms with the failure of her marriage - it's a quiet, meditative work that was originally published in Japanese in 1979, and while I felt that this story's cultural context was readily apparent as I was reading, it does have an introspective universality in its depiction of isolation that I think will resonate with a lot of modern, non-Japanese readers.

I will say, one thing about the fragmented narration started to grate on me - though this takes place over the course of a year and we are theoretically seeing events unfold in real time, the narrator would often say something like 'just two weeks ago, I got a call from my daughter's daycare,' and then we would rewind two weeks and she would tell us the daycare story... even though we were technically with the narrator at the time those events happened? It fractures the chronology in a way that doesn't totally make sense to me and adds an unnecessary level of telling rather than showing.

But still, I thought this was a good introduction to Yuko Tsushima, and I'll definitely look into reading more from her.

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Thank you and Netgalley for a copy of this book. I really wanted to enjoy it however it just was not my type of story. I tried but couldn’t connect with the characters. That said, someone else might really enjoy it very much. It is not a terrible book by any means, just not my type of story

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A short novel about a Japanese woman who finds herself living alone, with her 3 year old daughter, as the sole residential tenant of an office building, after her husband has suddenly decided to leave them. He gives no reason, is resistant to signing the divorce papers, claims he has no money for alimony or child support, but demands to see the woman and/or the daughter whenever the mood strikes him. I do not like this man. The child is strangely old for being only 3, and does things like care for her mother when she is sick. There is much cultural difference here, as the child care place regularly criticizes the mother when the child misbehaves, as do other neighbors and members of the community. A child misbehaving is clearly entirely the mother's fault and should be a source of shame for her. At times about the lost and lonely feeling the mother has, and at times about the difficulties of being a suddenly single mother, I found myself wanting more of the descriptions of light and space that are fairly sporadically inserted in the story. Color and light and airflow become as much characters as the people in the book, and you can sometimes feel the darkness of say the new blue mesh required to be added to the windows, or the piercing brightness of the silver waterproof paint added all over the rooftop after a leak. I would have liked a few breaks on the novel, as there are none, but overall a good read.

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Originally published as a serial in the late 1970s in Japan, this book tells the story of a woman going through a separation from her husband while navigating the challenges of raising a two years old in a new apartment. It's an emotionally complex story, and the episodic story draws you in to a tale of psychological chaos and, perhaps, eventual recovery. Descriptive scenes out of Japanese life and culture detail an engrossing environment in a bright apartment with challenging and sympathetic characters - especially a fragile, yet surprisingly resilient child. If you're a fan of social and psychological realism and are interested in fiction from outside the western collection, you really should read this.

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