Schoolgirl

A woman in her mid-thirties lives in a Tokyo high-rise with a well-paid husband she married for his prospects, not for love, and their fourteen-year-old daughter. The girl, a vegan at an international school, runs an English-language channel urging viewers to wake up to climate change and injustice, and dismisses fiction as escapism and her mother as ruined by it. The narrator, who grew up poor with a mother who drank and beat her, adores her child but cannot reach her; she is seeing another man and is haunted by thoughts of dying. Over one day, with the husband abroad, her moods rise and fall, and then the daughter posts a video about a Dazai story taken from her mother's shelves, which gives the two something to talk about.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novella

Length

172 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

First published

2021 by Bungeishunju

Author's age

31 when first published

ISBN

9784163915081 (original)

9781763600928 (Gazebo Books, Australia)