Mieko Kawakami's earlier novel, HEAVEN, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and she is renowned for her portrayal of characters on the margins of society. Outsiders, as this reader often happily feels like, when indulging in something this steeped in Japanese society, conventions and rules.
All of them are fleeing something.
In SISTERS IN YELLOW it's not just that her female characters are living on the margins, it's also the way that they are all fleeing something. Centred around the story of Hana though, she's a young woman from a very marginalised background. The daughter of a single mother, Hana grew up in very straightened circumstances, having to take responsibility for herself from a very young age. Her father a fleeting presence at best, her mother a bar worker who was out at nights, a more constant presence in her daughter's life, but still somehow also fleeting and erratic, Hana meets, as a young girl, her mother's friend Kimiko before, at an older age, finding herself part of Kimiko's personal, and professional life.
Starting out so very slowly, almost cautiously, some readers may be questioning the "thriller" categorisation very quickly. The set up to this story is definitely drawn out, but the setting of the scene, the background of Hana, her thought processes, wants and desires become a big part of how the impact of the thriller aspects play out. The story is also very much about money, power and control, although it seems like the pursuit of money is, for Hana, a way to ensure safety and security. Contrasted starkly against the men for whom money means power and control over others.
Steeped in Japanese culture and sensibility, the story centres around Hana, the bar that she and Kimiko start called "Lemon", the two other young women - Ran and Momoko - who join them, and the fight they all have on their hands against predators, organised crime and more than hefty dose of bad luck. Told as a reflection on her past, something has forced Hana and Kimiko apart, and it's that question that keeps the early part of the book ticking along - what happened to that close relationship. Another mother-daughter relationship that seems to be no more.
The style of this novel is, as hinted at in the blurb, poetic noir. That slow, considered start draws the reader into Hana's head, as she narrates the story of her own life. Once the reader is invested in Hana as a trusted friend, or even an acquaintance that you can't help but feel for as she fought a start in life not of her choosing or making, you'll find the threat when it comes, creeping out of the dark particularly enthralling.
Sisters in Yellow
All of them are fleeing something. Growing up without a father, Hana’s tired of the pity in her classmates’ eyes, and finds a flashier mother figure in Kimiko. Kimiko is older than Hana's mother but seems much younger, chatting easily about school and boys and wanting a better life. Fate throws them together with two more young women—bruised but not broken by life. Together the four set out to remake their lives, fighting predatory lenders, organized criminals, and plain bad luck as they open a bar called Lemon.
Keeping the business going, and trying to take care of each other, forms the core of this enrapturing novel. It is a story of startling reversals and vivid portraits of the matriarchy of Tokyo nightlife and its adjacent criminal underclasses. From the bar owners to the aging hostesses to the young street touts coaxing people off the street to places like Lemon, everyone wants a chance at renewal, but can everyone get it?
Narrated by Hana in Kawakami’s trademark evocatively poetic style and paced like a noir, Sisters in Yellow will be the literary blockbuster of the season. This epic of friendship and betrayal is the kind of book one longs to return to when away from a world until itself, and a book that makes you think while it produces immensities of feeling. It is a major novel that, like so many of the best recent phenomena—from Donna Tartt to Hanya Yanigahara—explores how we survive (or don't) together.
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