Lexile = 820
I think that this title was a Beehive Nominee several years ago. That's why I bought it, but now it is on the list of titles for the "Around the World" contest. It is a good pick for a Japanese novel, but I can't say that I liked this. Perhaps the reasons it's not for me are directly tied to its Japaneseness. The dialog seems stilted and sparse. And the entire theme is recovering after the suicide of Yuki's mother, Shizuko. The suicide is (apparently) done out of love for her daughter... and I don't get that.
Ulimately, this is a story of survival and healing. I felt like Shizuko could have been a better mother had she lived. Shizuko's Daughter appeared on MANY "best of" lists when it was first published. When I read it 25 years(!) ago, I was reading it as a daughter; now I read it as a mother. Perhaps that is the difference.
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