Swimming fish in the dim sun, Riku Onda. Translated by Allison Watts.
Riku Onda has been a staple of Japanese suspense literature since the 1990s, but it was translated by Alison Watts and released by the small Bitter Lemon Press in “The Aosawa Murders,” which debuted in English in 2020. I found an audience in the world. A London-based publisher of international crime novels. “Fish swimming in mottled sunlight”, a dreamy detour psychological thriller, This is Onda’s second work, which is again translated into English by Watt.
This book unfolds overnight. Men and women share the supper they bought at the store to mark the end of their relationship and eat and drink in an empty Tokyo apartment before going on different paths in the morning. They have been in misery and mutual suspicion since the hiking guide fell off a cliff during a trip to the mountains last year. Each believes that others have killed the guide. They are men I have never met, but I have connected with them in a way that makes accidental death very accidental.
The story slowly appears in an oval shape by alternating chapters from the perspective of the two protagonists. Learn the name of the narrator — Aki for women, Hiro for men — in just 30 pages, the nature of their relationship seems to shift from chapter to chapter, out of focus and changing with new discoveries and confessions. is. Most of the novels.
The image of the title of this book comes from Aki, who is thinking about Hiro’s distant expression. Like shadows woven into the shimmering light, fragments of stuffy emotions and desires that cannot be expressed in words fly around. Under the mottled sunlight, the fish twist and bend at the bottom of the azure pool. Occasionally, when you flip the fins, they emerge on the surface of the water, but you cannot see or count them clearly. Flickering, fragmentation, choking, shaking, twisting, spinning—this impression makes “swimming fish in mottled sunlight” more memorable than any detail in the plot or character.
Onda is an intriguing writer and a genre novelist who does not write properly or self-consciously in the customs of the genre. Her stories are elusive and embarrassing, and half of her enjoyment of reading them is to loop, test walls, engage in maze-like structures, and solve puzzles.However, fans of the “Aozawa Murder Case” You may miss the mystery and eerieness while shaking the energy of the work. “Fish swimming” is not lacking in originality, but its content is not as attractive as it is. Certainly it is difficult to identify the fish, and there is some joy in seeing them. But this is not enough to maintain a suspense novel. The fish swim from place to place, making interesting patterns and still making some jumping splashes in the pond.
All tension arises from the claustrophobic setting. Aki and Hiro sit facing each other behind a luggage-packed suitcase to use as a table, digging into the past and uncovering the core secrets of their identity. They love and fear each other. Aki even believes that Hiro might kill her. Bubble bubbles. But it’s not the heightened sense of danger that drives the novel, only the vague, protracted sensation that the stone-falling wild epiphany has disappeared and the water has been disturbed.
Stepha is the mysterious author of the Juniper Song, “Your Home Pays.” She is the series editor for Best American Mystery & Suspense.
Swimming fish in the dim sun, Riku Onda. Translated by Allison Watts. | 204pp. Bitter Lemon Press | Paperback, $ 15.95
