四時過ぎの船

Two strands alternate. In one, Saeko, a widow living by herself on an island off Kyushu, her memory starting to slip, hears that this summer only her younger grandson Minoru will come, because his elder brother Hiroshi must have eye surgery; she notes the boy's arrival time in a notebook and sets out for the pier, thoughts of her dead husband and of the child she took in from her sister coming and going. In the other, Minoru is nearly thirty and jobless, back on the island with Hiroshi, who has since lost his sight entirely, to help their mother clear out the house Saeko left. He comes across the note but cannot work out what it referred to, and his grandmother's pet dialect word for 'bothersome' begins to sound like his own fear of what lies ahead for him.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

120 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Japan

First published

2017 by Shinchosha

Author's age

29 when first published

ISBN

9784103507420 (original)