First published 2019
The unnamed portrait painter has been living alone in a house in the mountains of Japan, surrounded by strange presences he has learned to accept. He has been working on a portrait of Marie Akikawa, a teenage girl whose neighbor commissioned the painting. Then one afternoon Marie does not come home from school. She is simply gone. The painter sets out to find her, and the search pulls him deeper into territory he cannot explain or prepare for. At the same time, questions that gathered in the first book press closer. What happened long ago to the man who painted the canvas called "Killing Commendatore"? Who is the faceless man who has appeared at the edges of the painter's world? This second volume moves faster than the first. The mysteries do not multiply further; they begin to resolve. Pieces that seemed unrelated find their positions, and the full picture of what the painting means, and what it has set in motion, comes into focus. What the painter has to face to get Marie back costs him something real.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, magical-realism, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, introspective, meditative, mysterious, unsettling
Tropes: magical-realism, mystery-unfolding, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Japan, Mountains
Period: 21st-century
480 pages · Paperback · TUSQUETS
Content warnings: death, kidnapping