I thought I would like this more than I did, but I just could not connect with the story or the character of the mother. I will give it a rating but won’t review it externally. Thanks for the opportunity.

3.5 Stars

Originally published in monthly installments in a literary Japanese magazine in the late 1970s, in twelve sections over the course of a year, Yuko Tsushima is considered one of the most noteworthy Japanese writers of her generation. The English translation is by Geraldine Harcourt.

”The apartment had windows on all sides.
“I spent a year there, with my little daughter, on the top floor of an old four-storey office building. We had the whole fourth floor to ourselves, plus the rooftop terrace.”

As this begins, the narrator is a newly separated mother with a two-year-old daughter soon to be three, and she is struggling with all of the ins and outs of single parenting, along with the struggles she is having trying to co-parent her child with a somewhat elusive and contrary soon-to-be-ex. The focus in this story is on this woman and her life, and the life of her child through the year that follows.

”I could picture as in a dream or a movie that spot as it had appeared back then, some fifteen years earlier: a spot clad in flowers and fruit trees, where the sunshine seemed to have congealed. It was bright and tranquil, disquietingly so. That was the sight that presented itself just beyond the historic old gate.”
”No one else must know about this place that made me yearn to dissolve until I became a particle of light myself. The way that light cohered in one place was unearthly.”

Where this story shines is in some skillfully descriptive writing, which not only expresses the beauty of the light that seems to fill these pages, but the waning of her light within, as well. As she and her young daughter go through the emotions of their ravaged world, filled as it is with water, light, dreams and nightmares, may be torn apart, but they may, in time, rebuild.


Pub Date: 12 FEB 2019

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The stream-of-conscious narrative of this book sometimes had drastic leaps; I'm not sure if the ARC I received from Netgalley for my honest opinion could have used more line breaks and white space in the file. After reading more male than female Japanese writers lately, it was nice to have a distinctly different point of view, all while not being depressing or overly schmaltzy.

Posted on Goodreads on 9/28/18.

Territory of Light is a short, intense book about one woman's first year after separating from her husband. It's a subtle book; Tsushima never explicitly tell us that the narrator is lonely, isolated, or depressed, but rather lets the reader witness her mental state as she struggles to raise her daughter without her husband. This story is beautiful and heartbreaking.

The territory of light from the title is the woman's new apartment, which is flooded with light from windows on all sides. Her young daughter loves this warm and sunny place, which brings comfort to the narrator, who feels guilty about separating the child from her father. The apartment isn't perfect; there was a flooding incident and the neighbors aren't the friendliness, but this is their new home.

"All this while, I had kept hoping that once I settled into the new apartment - about the time I became able to find my way around it with my eyes closed and not bump into things - the normality of a relaxed and reasonably sociable existence like the one I used to have, back when I'd started living with my husband, would be conferred on me. That seems to have been my state of mind in those months. For all the world as though I were studying for an entrance exam, I guess I must have believed that if I did my best I would pass, after which I could coast, feeling proud of myself. I did start out with every intention of jettisoning my starry-eyed expectations and recognizing what I'd failed to see so far, but I didn't yet know what it meant in practice to trim my expectations."

This book broke my heart. Since her husband has left, our narrator only has her daughter and her mundane job. She fantasizes about connecting with the other mothers from her daughter's daycare, but the friendship never materializes. She drinks and has casual sex to fill a void. None of these feelings are ever explicitly stated in the text, but Tsushima's sparse prose nonetheless illustrates these emotions. The matter-of-fact narration is so raw.

The daughter cries herself to sleep at night, which eventually escalates into screaming fits. I'm not a parent, but Tsushima's description of how the narrator reacted felt so true.

"It was not so much hearing her crying as finding myself shouting vile abuse and feeling like smothering her that made me realize for the first time just hat the long days ahead would be like. I longed to have my old life back. But there was no going back now, nor any way out. I couldn't decide whether I'd done this to myself or fallen for a ruse of unknown origin. what I'd failed to see so far, it turned out, was my own cruelty."

Our narrator's journey is long and shadowed by death. People on the sidelines of her life begin to die and she sees funeral after funeral on the street. Out of this death finally comes healing.

"I had the feeling that I finally understood what the series of deaths had been trying to tell me. The light of heat, of energy. My body was fully endowed with heat and energy. I couldn't help but see myself standing there last night, transfixed by the glowing red sky, never sparing the approach of death a thought."

I loved every bit of this book. Tsushima's writing is beautiful, and she uses every word deliberately. There is no excess. I am astounded at the complexity of the narrator's emotions, which are never directly written about, but are nevertheless incredibly vivid.

If you like contemporary Japanese fiction, you will love Territory of Light.

A Territory of Light was short, sweet, and raw. A story of a woman in Tokyo making it on her own with her 3 year old daughter after separating from her husband. This story made me laugh, cry, and feel frustrated at times with the societal insistence that a divorce would be the worst thing the nameless mother could do with her life. I loved the way the author didn’t sugarcoat anything about the aspect of motherhood. Her thoughts, her fears, her doubts about going at it alone. The author’s writing style was beautiful which hooked me from the very beginning. Overall I really enjoyed this book.

Following the separation from her husband, a woman and her daughter learn how to live without him. We are witness to the confusion, grief, and transition to life on their own. At times the writing is beautiful, at others it becomes hard to follow.

This book is about a single mother who is trying to deal with divorce while dealing with her baby. I didn’t like the main character because she does not seem to care for her daughter as she should. It was an interesting book but I didn’t like the flow. The book is weird to me.
ARC provided by publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yuko Tsushima was an award winning author in Japan, who following her death in 2016 is experiencing a resurgence of popularity in translation. Territory of Light, written in 1979 when she was in her early 30's, is composed of a series comprising a novel which was published chapter by chapter over the course of a year. Each month she followed her unnamed narrator as she traversed the transition between marriage and single motherhood, forging an identity and living with her (also unnamed) 3-year-old daughter. Unsentimental and uncompromising, it is a short book, but worth it. As she herself was a single mother, it may or may not have been written from personal experience. (less)

This was an interesting read and the author's writing was emotional and honest. I found the ending a bit abrupt.

I really REALLY wanted to like this one, but I couldn’t. I found the main character so awful that this story (which is pretty short) just went on and on and onnnnnn annnndddd onnnnn.

Nothing remarkable really stood out for me. Sorry, friends.

I would, however, love to hear from my high school/adult learners what they would take away from this one. Although not personally stimulating, I have a feeling that a younger crowd would really dive into this and absolutely love it.

“I wasn’t sure which was real, which a dream.”

This book is about a single mother of a toddler dealing with the stress of a divorce. I’d describe it as a bit eerie. Dream-like. The main character is not very likeable and it’s difficult to sympathize with her when she does not care for her daughter as she should.

The format of the book was also difficult. This version was not separated into chapters and each story line runs into the next without resolving anything. The author would frequently describe dreams and then jump back into reality without any transition, making the reader wonder if this was really happening or still part of the dream. I’m assuming this was on purpose because this quote from the book sums it up pretty well. But made for a confusing reading experience.

It is set in Tokyo and I enjoyed seeing some familiar things from my trip there. Traveling on the train and counting the stations that go by, or going up to the twelfth floor of a department store for a nice restaurant. A lost woman asks for directions and a character walks her several minutes out of their way to ensure she reaches her destination. It felt like Tokyo.
I’d give this book a 3/5. Thank you to @netgalley for the copy in exchange for a review.

I ended up having to shelve “Territory of Light” after several chapters. The story follows a young mother and her infant daughter after the mother separates from her husband. The scenes take place in a small, cramped Tokyo apartment where everyone hears everything, and she has bad pipes. While the writing is lovely, I could not get into the story nor did I think it was moving at a “good” pace. It felt slow-moving.

I almost wanted to click on the "I will not give feedback for this title' button for this book.
Because I don't really know where to start!

It's not that I think it's bad, or that it's poorly written, but for me, personally, I don't really know how I feel about it.
It's like I read a dream, a thick, heat of summer dream, where everything seems to be covered with gauze light and you can practically taste the air.
And that's impressive, for a book to evoke. But I didn't feel connected, invested to the characters or the story, just like a dream, where everything feels one step removed from reality.

I think the author excels at writing a short slice of life and all the myriad things that happen and how we feel during it, but would I read it again? No. I think perhaps this style is just not for me.
Three stars, not because I hated it, but because like a dream, it's fading from my tenuous grasp.