Touring the Land of the Dead

Natsuko and her husband Taichi board a bullet train out of Tokyo for a few days away. Taichi, thirty-six, has barely been able to move his arms and legs since a sudden brain attack eight years earlier, yet for Natsuko the time since has been easier than her life before marriage. Then she shared a home with her mother and her brother, who went on squandering money once her father had died, unable to let go of the family's vanished wealth, and who tormented her with their selfishness. She would rather not remember it at all: something that was neither poverty, loneliness nor illness. They are heading for a seaside hotel that was her mother's favourite in its days as a grand resort; now cheap and faded, its fall echoes her family's.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novella

Length

156 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Japan

First published

2012 by Kawade Shobo Shinsha

Author's age

36 when first published

ISBN

9784309021225 (original)

9781609456511 (Europa Editions, United States)