Cross García Márquez and Simenon and set the piece on the Sea of Japan,
and you'll have a feel for Ono's latest... Fans of Kenzaburo Oe's Death
by Water and Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 will enjoy Ono's enigmatic
story." --Kirkus (starred review)
All societies, whether big or small, try to hide their wounds away. In
this, his Mishima Prize-winning masterpiece, Masatsugu Ono considers a
fishing village on the Japanese coast. Here a new police chief plays
audience for the locals, who routinely approach him with bottles of
liquor and stories to tell. As the city council election approaches, and
as tongues are loosened by drink, evidence of rampant corruption piles
up--and a long-held feud between the village's captains of industry, two
brothers-in-law, threatens to boil over.
Meanwhile, just out of frame, the chief's teenage daughter is listening,
slowly piecing the locals' accounts together, reading into their words
and poring over the silence they leave behind. As accounts of horrific
violence--including a dangerous attempt to save some indentured Korean
coal mine workers from the Japanese military police and the fate of a
group of Chinese refugees--steadily come into focus, she sets out for
the Bay, where the tide has recently turned red and an ominous boat from
the past has suddenly reappeared.
Populated by an infectious cast of characters that includes a solemn
drunk with a burden to bear; a scarred woman constantly tormented by the
local kids' fireworks; a lone communist; and the "Silica Four," a group
of out-of-work men who love to gossip--Echo on the Bay is a quiet,
masterful epic in village miniature. Proof again that there are no small
stories--and that History's untreated wounds, no matter how well hidden,
fester, always threatening to resurface.
