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Territory of Light A Novel Yuko Tsushima Geraldine Harcourt 9780374273217 Books

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From one of the most significant contemporary Japanese writers, a haunting, dazzling novel of loss and rebirth

“Yuko Tsushima is one of the most important Japanese writers of her generation.” ―Foumiko Kometani, The New York Times

I was puzzled by how I had changed. But I could no longer go back . . .

It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light streaming through the windows, so bright she has to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness, becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.

At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire, and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time. It won the inaugural Noma Literary Prize.

Territory of Light A Novel Yuko Tsushima Geraldine Harcourt 9780374273217 Books

"Territory of Light" is a spare, often bleak novel depicting a year (c. 1970s Japan) in the life of an unnamed Japanese woman separated from her husband and raising her 3-year old daughter (also unnamed) on her own. The arrangement not to share parenting responsibilities with her estranged husband was an understandable choice, but carried with it "consequences" for which she was completely unprepared. The novel charts her journey, in stark, often poetic prose, through the relentless demands of single parenthood in a largely judgemental and unsympathetic culture which left her bereft of friendship, emotional support or meaningful help of any kind. It's no wonder she floundered, flip-flopped between narcissism, neglect, and compensatory care of her daughter, whom she grew to resent.

This is not a book with a tangible happy ending. However, the narrator's journey from what mistakenly appeared at the beginning to be a life filled with possibilities and light (the extreme light-drenched apt. acting as metaphor here), turned out to be "skim milk masquerading as cream, " and cheerlessness and despair descended with a quickness. The descent from this "light" to darkness to what portends to be a more realistic path, consisting of darkness along with light--a mixed bag, as life usually is, carries within it the seeds of hope.

I suspect this woman's tale was a reflection of the author's own life as she herself had to negotiate the minefield of single motherhood in Japan at that time. No doubt untold legions of women would have resonated with and found a common bond with the narrator of the story as it was serialized in a magazine over the course of a year. Despite the novel's specific culture, era, and setting, the feelings of betrayal, loss, loneliness, and fear, and the inability to cope with an untenable situation when one's stability and hopes have been wrenched away, are timeless and universal.

It is sad that the author, Yuko Tsushima, passed away in 2016, and will not be able to enjoy the acclaim she deserves as her work is now made accessible to a wholly new and broad audience.

I won this ARC in a Goodreads' giveaway with the understanding that I would provide an unbiased review for Goodreads and to include the review on other bookseller sites.


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Territory of Light A Novel Yuko Tsushima Geraldine Harcourt 9780374273217 Books Reviews

3.5 Stars

Originally published in monthly installments in a literary Japanese magazine in the late 1970s, in twelve sections over the course of a year, Yuko Tsushima is considered one of the most noteworthy Japanese writers of her generation. The English translation is by Geraldine Harcourt.

”The apartment had windows on all sides.
“I spent a year there, with my little daughter, on the top floor of an old four-storey office building. We had the whole fourth floor to ourselves, plus the rooftop terrace.”

As this begins, the narrator is a newly separated mother with a two-year-old daughter soon to be three, and she is struggling with all of the ins and outs of single parenting, along with the struggles she is having trying to co-parent her child with a somewhat elusive and contrary soon-to-be-ex. The focus in this story is on this woman and her life, and the life of her child through the year that follows.

”I could picture as in a dream or a movie that spot as it had appeared back then, some fifteen years earlier a spot clad in flowers and fruit trees, where the sunshine seemed to have congealed. It was bright and tranquil, disquietingly so. That was the sight that presented itself just beyond the historic old gate.”
”No one else must know about this place that made me yearn to dissolve until I became a particle of light myself. The way that light cohered in one place was unearthly.”

Where this story shines is in some skillfully descriptive writing, which not only expresses the beauty of the light that seems to fill these pages, but the waning of her light within, as well. As she and her young daughter go through the emotions of their ravaged world, filled as it is with water, light, dreams and nightmares, may be torn apart, but they may, in time, rebuild.

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
While Territory of Light had some meaningful concepts, overall I did not care for the story. I didn't connect with the characters. Honestly, it's just not my type of reading. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
This book is about a single mother who is trying to deal with divorce while dealing with her baby. I didn’t like the main character because she does not seem to care for her daughter as she should. It was an interesting book but I didn’t like the flow. The book is weird to me. ARC provided by publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This slim collection of vignettes was originally published in serial format in Japan in 1978-1979. While it's an interesting concept- a woman coping with major change in her life and struggling to raise her 2 year old daughter- it feels more poetic than narrative. There are some lovely descriptions of light (hence the title). Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Worth a read to experience Tsushima.
Everything from the slim tome itself to the story was elegant. This was easy to read and I found myself very invested in this eerily depressing woman's life. The interactions between the mom and daughter were particularly interesting.
In the end, I was left with a string of questions that were never answered throughout the book but would have shed light on the reason behind many of her actions--what prompted the divorce? That was the biggest issue I kept wanting to know but the story only focuses on the how, not why. It was a disconcerting read and definitely different from anything I've read recently.
@fsgbooks
"Territory of Light" is a spare, often bleak novel depicting a year (c. 1970s Japan) in the life of an unnamed Japanese woman separated from her husband and raising her 3-year old daughter (also unnamed) on her own. The arrangement not to share parenting responsibilities with her estranged husband was an understandable choice, but carried with it "consequences" for which she was completely unprepared. The novel charts her journey, in stark, often poetic prose, through the relentless demands of single parenthood in a largely judgemental and unsympathetic culture which left her bereft of friendship, emotional support or meaningful help of any kind. It's no wonder she floundered, flip-flopped between narcissism, neglect, and compensatory care of her daughter, whom she grew to resent.

This is not a book with a tangible happy ending. However, the narrator's journey from what mistakenly appeared at the beginning to be a life filled with possibilities and light (the extreme light-drenched apt. acting as metaphor here), turned out to be "skim milk masquerading as cream, " and cheerlessness and despair descended with a quickness. The descent from this "light" to darkness to what portends to be a more realistic path, consisting of darkness along with light--a mixed bag, as life usually is, carries within it the seeds of hope.

I suspect this woman's tale was a reflection of the author's own life as she herself had to negotiate the minefield of single motherhood in Japan at that time. No doubt untold legions of women would have resonated with and found a common bond with the narrator of the story as it was serialized in a magazine over the course of a year. Despite the novel's specific culture, era, and setting, the feelings of betrayal, loss, loneliness, and fear, and the inability to cope with an untenable situation when one's stability and hopes have been wrenched away, are timeless and universal.

It is sad that the author, Yuko Tsushima, passed away in 2016, and will not be able to enjoy the acclaim she deserves as her work is now made accessible to a wholly new and broad audience.

I won this ARC in a Goodreads' giveaway with the understanding that I would provide an unbiased review for Goodreads and to include the review on other bookseller sites.