by Ruth Ozeki
First published 2013
Nao sits in a Tokyo café, bullied and alone, planning her suicide. The sixteen-year-old decides to write one last thing: the story of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who has lived over a hundred years. Nao pours her pain into a diary, documenting her ancestor's remarkable life as her own reaches its breaking point. Across the Pacific Ocean, novelist Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on her remote island shore. The box contains mysterious artifacts, likely debris from the 2011 tsunami. Inside, Ruth finds Nao's diary and becomes absorbed in the teenager's story. As Ruth reads, she gets pulled into Nao's world and her uncertain fate. The discovery forces Ruth to confront her own future while trying to understand what happened to the girl whose words now consume her. Two women separated by an ocean find their lives connected through the power of storytelling and the search for belonging.
Genres: literary-fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Tokyo, Pacific Ocean
Period: 2011 Tsunami
432 pages · Hardcover · Viking
Content warnings: depression, suicide