⇒ Read The Ocean in the Closet Yuko Taniguchi 9781566891943 Books

The Ocean in the Closet Yuko Taniguchi 9781566891943 Books

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The Ocean in the Closet Yuko Taniguchi 9781566891943 Books

I love this book and story. I felt, heard and sensed the story all the way through. I eagerly await more by this author.


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The Ocean in the Closet Yuko Taniguchi 9781566891943 Books Reviews

The Ocean in the closet is a fantastic and beautifully written book...And now one of my favorites.
I ordered this book as soon as it came out, after having read Taniguchi's "Foreign Wife Elegy".

The story is about a mother, Anna, going through a nervous breakdown, and her young daughter Helen, trying to understand why. This leads Helen to Hideo's home in Japan. Hideo has been wondering about Anna, his niece, who was adopted by a family in the U.S.

I enjoyed the easy flow between Hideo/Japan & Helen/USA (notice the chapter titles!). I also enjoy Taniguchi's writing - her similes, metaphors, allegories, how Helen & Hideo describe their feelings.

It's a well-written beautiful story with fantastic imagery and descriptions.

I would definitely like to see another novel (or book of poetry) by Yuko Taniguchi.
In my vast reading experience, I have yet to find many novels that really speak to the aftermath of war in the way that this one did for me. Honestly, war is one major topic I tend to shy away from in my reading. Maybe that this book focuses on the affects of war, and how they reverberate through generations is why I managed to get through it and love every page.

The story is told from two perspectives; the first is Helen, a nine year old girl living with a father suffering from PTSD (a Vietnam vet) and a mother who is disconnected from reality. When she's sent to live with her aunt and uncle, she begins to discover things about her parents which lead her on a journey to Japan to discover more about her mother's past.

The second is Hideo, Helen's great-uncle. From him, we learn about Ume, Helen's grandmother, and Helen's mother Anna. The strict Japanese culture combined with the horrors of WWII in Japan lead Ume to make horrible decisions to give her child the best possible life. Here we see how the history of this family is passed down to Helen, and how Helen must be the one to reconnect with the past instead of being distant from it.

Language is everything in this book; from the way the image of water is depicted to the culture of Japan, every page is beautiful. It surprises you and breaks your heart with the stories revealed, but the whole time you see how the awful pasts of each character reflects in their present. It's not always a positive reflection, but it is always honest. Rarely do you get a book that's honesty moves you as much as this one does.
4.5 stars

Taniguchi writes at the intersection of human life intersection of sanity and trauma, the intersection of history and modern life, the intersection of Japanese culture and US, and the intersection of war and peace. These places are the most interesting, and the most revealing.

The story begins with a letter from a 10 year old American girl to a great Uncle in Japan she has never met.

Little by little, this girls' life is revealed to the reader. Her helpless and PTSD father; a mother who locks her and her brother in the closet when life becomes too difficult, a complicated family history, and an American Uncle and Aunt who will do their best to shield the girl and her brother from the unfairness of having parents too traumatized by life to take care of them.

Helen's mother is the half-Japanese, half American adopted daughter of a lady Helen only knows as Mrs. Hogan. Her biological grandmother is one of the forgotten victims of World War II-- a "comfort woman"-- forced to work in a brothel for occupying American soldiers. Her great uncle has never forgotten the little baby his sister was forced to give up to an orphanage. When Helen's letter comes, the uncle remembers both the devastation his own family suffered under allied bombing, but also his wife's terrible experiences as a settler in Manchuria.

Through a visit to Japan, Helen hopes to help her mother heal, and the uncle hopes to regain some sense of his dead sister.

The prose is very straight-forward and has a naive quality to it that is reflected in Helen's character. Despite being a 10 year old, she has the wonder and belief-in-magical of a much younger child.

"I didn't know how many stamps I had to put on for this letter for going all the way to Japan. I guessed and put ten stamps. I didn't want it to go halfway and come back in the middle of the sky."

This touching innocence, along with the quite harrowing details of war-time life, are another intersection where Taniguchi's story reveals a kind of transcending truth.

While the majority of the characters kind of blur together in that they all have this deep sadness but naive trust about them, the views of Japan both from Helen's and the Uncle's eyes as well as the differing points of view on Japan's involvement in the war are very interesting.

A story about the ways people become broken.
I love this book and story. I felt, heard and sensed the story all the way through. I eagerly await more by this author.