Set in an imagined town outside Tokyo, Clarissa Goenawan’s dark, spellbinding literary debut follows a young man’s path to self-discovery in the wake of his sister’s murder. Ren Ishida has nearly completed his graduate degree at Keio University when he receives news of his sister’s violent death. Keiko was stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Ren heads to Akakawa to … heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister’s affairs, failing to understand why she chose to turn her back on the family and Tokyo for this desolate place years ago.
But then Ren is offered Keiko’s newly vacant teaching position at a prestigious local cram school and her bizarre former arrangement of free lodging at a wealthy politician’s mansion in exchange for reading to the man’s ailing wife. He accepts both, abandoning Tokyo and his crumbling relationship there in order to better understand his sister’s life and what took place the night of her death.
As Ren comes to know the eccentric local figures, from the enigmatic politician who’s boarding him to his fellow teachers and a rebellious, captivating young female student, he delves into his shared childhood with Keiko and what followed. Haunted in his dreams by a young girl who is desperately trying to tell him something, Ren realizes that Keiko Ishida kept many secrets, even from him.
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Clarissa Goenawan’s Rainbirds begins with Ren Ishida going to scatter his murdered sister’s ashes. The remainder of the story unfolds in a series of dreams mixed with real-time set in a small town, Akakawa. One rainy night, the sister, Keiko, was murdered on her way home from work. The police are unable to uncover any leads. The brother and sister were close, so as Ren winds up his sister’s affairs, he determines to find out who murdered her as well as why Keiko abandoned him and their home in Tokyo for such a bleak little town.
Ren takes over Keiko’s job at a local cram school and her apartment and soon meets various residents of Akakawa including an mysterious politician and his mentally ill wife; Rio, a female student who rebels against her father and believes she’s fallen in love withs Ren; her father; and Honda, a math teacher at the cram school. During this period Ren is haunted by dreams of a girl he calls Pigtails. He senses that she is trying to tell him something and that she’ll go away once he figures that out. Ren learns a great deal about himself, his sister, and his family as he negotiates the loss of his sister.
Goenawan’s prose is as spare and evocative as a haiku. A trace of magical realism runs throughout. Ren’s quiet grief over his sister’s death is believable. This novel is an unusual mystery—not the typical whodunnit—combined with a ghost story.
Well written. I recommend!
This book was pointless and a waste of my time. Very disappointing.
I
I liked it until the endind
started out great, but after the first 60 pages the author lost her way. i made myself finish the book, but it was not worth my time or effort
(Audiobook)
What I thought I was going to get with Rainbirds was not what I got. While I knew the storyline was going to focus on Ren Ishida, I thought it would stick closely to solving the mystery of his sister Keiko. What I got was more of Ren falling into Keikos life. It appears he was picking up the pieces the she left behind.
I did enjoy getting to know Ren and watching his transformation from Student to teacher at a cram school in the small town of Akakawa. Akakawa itself became a lively place that was easily able to be transported too. I loved the coming of characters and seeing just how his world had twisted from his to hers.
The people who had once been a part of Keiko life have seemed to embrace Ren as if he has been there all along. Slowly bits and pieces unravel revealing the mysterious death. I did think that touch was gracefully executed.
There was even a point when I went to run and grab milk from the store and upon returning home, my husband asked me why I was just sitting in my car for five minutes. I simply stated that it got to a really good part. Which was one of the twist I did not see coming. But after it was revealed I was like, WOW…It all makes sense now.
David Shih narrated Rainbirds and it was just remarkable. He had the ability to smoothly transform his voice between characters male and female with in one scene. I thoroughly enjoyed it and personally would listen to more narrations done by him.
Indonesian-born Clarissa Goenawan’s debut novel, Rainbirds, is set in Japan, was written in Singapore, and was first published in the United States (with foreign language rights sold in ten countries and counting) making it something of a transnational literary event. It starts out with twentysomething Ren Ishida traveling to the fictional town of Akakawa to pick up the cremains of his murdered sister, Keiko, and talk to the police. While there, he falls into a job teaching at the cram school where his sister had been employed – and why not, since he has just turned in his final graduation thesis at Keio University, and has nothing else lined up? — and decides to hang out for a while, and try to figure out what happened to Keiko.
The disaffected young male narrator, references to pasta and jazz, and occasional weirdness – Ren promises a girl he meets in a dream to find her in real life; another girl compulsively shoplifts bubblegum – suggest that the author is paying homage to Haruki Murakami. Fans of his slightly off-kilter brand of fiction will find much to enjoy here. Although the occasional small detail, such as omraisu for breakfast or the suggestion of throwing cremains into the sea, gave this reviewer pause, cultural authenticity is beside the point. As in Murakami’s fiction, the setting is not really Japan, per se, but an imaginary parallel “Japan” where anything can happen.
Rainbirds is a mystery, but not a nail-biter. Instead, secrets are revealed, surprises pop up, and tangled relationships are unraveled as the novel meanders toward its conclusion. Readers will be carried along by its creepy charm.
From the first page, a feeling of melancholy, of something lost, lingered as the plot unfurled. The small reveals felt like getting caught in a soft drizzle instead of a thunderstorm. But it was a bitterweet read of a man’s journey as he uncovers things about his sister’s life after her death and reconciles with his memories of her. Good story and engaging writing.