What is the appeal of a Japanese novel of 150 pages that makes it an international bestseller? The novel is very unpretentious and uneventful with a very light plot and still a page-turner.
The narrative takes you through the ordinary lives of ordinary people with a low horizon of expectations from life – nothing beyond love, work, and family. A hike in the mountains is described so simply and effortlessly that it has the effect of a still-life painting. It focuses your gaze and sucks you into the reality of the everyday made to look mysterious and strange through the power of language. It makes the coolness of the night breeze or the fatigue and excitement of a mountain climb acquire a fresh deep meaning.
There is a lot of melodrama but it is so mellow and tender that creates a sub-genre of its own. Let us call it – the mellow-drama. The painful is combined with hope, death is not an end.
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