Sugihara is sitting alone at his friend's birthday party when a breath-taking girl named Sakurai walks up to him. He can't help but fall for her. Their relationship soon takes off, but Sugihara has a secret: though he was born and raised in Japan, he isn't Japanese. He's ethnically Korean, a Zainichi, and if Sakurai finds out, their relationship may change forever.
Equal parts coming of age story and modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, this novel explores growing up in a prejudiced world and how hard it can be to escape the consequences of simply being born.
I have a thing for first-person narrators who are teen/young adult guys, clumsy yet wise, both certain and uncertain of their place in the world. Sugihara fits the bill almost achingly perfectly, and the novel's blend of romance, friendship, and family dynamics appealed to me.
As a Zainichi (an ethnic Korean living in Japan), his life has been filled with racism and prejudice. He spends his early years attending a North Korean school in Japan, where he learns Korean and Marxism, but he doesn't take to either. He speaks Japanese, he could pass as Japanese, but he isn't, and he spends most of the novel being frustrated with this and trying to unravel what makes someone truly belong to a country.
There were parts that felt a bit juvenile to me - anytime a teenager is reading Nietzsche I have to roll my eyes (but this is probably because I, too, was an angsty existential teen so it may just hit too close to him and I'm not cringing at the character but at my former self. I digress.). But these moments are balanced by soft, delicate moments that touched me and held me suspended like a water droplet from a faucet. About a father dancing in the rain, a dog waiting for its owner to come home, an honest friendship gone too soon.
There's also a really interesting perspective shift in the middle. It threw me off a bit, but it's also quite clever and establishes a distance that works well with the novel's main message.
This book surprised me. I liked it.
7/10 📕