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A Quiet Life
Grove, $22 hard
Because I was born in Japan and first spoke both Japanese and English, I have always assumed a special affinity for things Japanese: sushi, flower arranging, silk brocade, and my 12-year-old Toyota. Therefore I was interested to read the latest novel of 1994 Novel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe. I recalled reading an essay in which Oe explained the intense effect his relationship with his son has had on his writing and his thinking of himself as a novelist. Oe's son, Hikari, was born with a unique set of qualities. While he suffers seizures and is unable to care for himself, he has grown up to become a successful composer with an uncanny knowledge and understanding of music.A Quiet Life (Grove, $22, hard) is the journal of a young woman, Ma-Chan, who has taken on the responsibility of caring for her mentally-handicapped older brother (nicknamed Eeyore) while her father, K, a famous novelist, spends a year at a California university with her mother. The quiet story documents Ma-Chan's deepening appreciation of her brother's abilities, fears about protecting him from the subtle danger of strangers, and a growing understanding of the roles each member plays in this irregular family. Written in the tradition of the Japanese "I"-novel, the story is made undeniably more evocative for its unsettling mix of fiction and non-fiction. What a strange device it is for a writer to try on the cloak of his daughter, recording the feelings he imagines for her about him and his exclusive relationship with his handicapped son. Indeed, Ma-Chan laments to her other brother, a busy university student, "A pain in the neck, don't you think... that he writes about us from his one-dimensional viewpoint? It's all right with my friends who know me, but it depresses me to think that I'm going to meet some people who, through his stories, will have preconceived ideas of me." Yet it is Ma-Chan's gentle patience, faltering confidence, suspicious nature, and naïveté which makes A Quiet Life a graceful, fascinating novel.
Central to the novel's action are Eeyore's weekly music lessons with Mr. Shigeto, an old friend of their father's. Mr. Shigeto and his wife shed light on the history of K's spiritual crisis, his "pinch," which his trip to the U.S. is an attempt to assuage. In addition to acquiring a more sympathetic understanding of her father, Ma-Chan observes her brother as a musician, musing that "Eeyore is a nobody, or rather a nobody with something about him that's slower than an ordinary nobody; in spite of this, though there's undoubtedly a mystifying side to him, an interesting person."
When a man is reported exposing himself around the neighborhood, Ma-Chan's overwhelming sense of responsibility for caring for her brother causes her to suspect him. Though another man is arrested, Ma-Chan decides that Eeyore is in need of more physical exercise and organizes swimming lessons with a young athlete recommended to her. As Eeyore eagerly masters his strokes, Ma-Chan's suspicions about the coach's intentions gather around her in a fog. "Whenever I'm in a plight," she notes, "I hear this revving whir within me. My body assumes this twisted shape, and at some point I suddenly droop my head. This is the phenomenon I call my robotization." Describing this behavior in herself, she empathizes with a battery-operated sumo wrestler doll Eeyore once received as a gift.
Inevitably the pair find themselves in danger, Ma-Chan having focused so intently on looking after her brother that she fails to protect herself. Eeyore's quick thinking saves his sister from her attacker. Recovering from the events, Ma-Chan relates her father's encouraging comment about the male hero of one of her favorite childhood stories: "Ma-Chan, the moment your heart started beating fast as you lay in bed reading Momo, and when you, too, wished to save the world by retrieving time from the men in gray, well, that was the sign that a little girl could save the entire world." Haunted by a dream of her wedding day in which Eeyore is her attendant and the groom is nowhere in sight, Ma-Chan realizes that though she might always be one of her brother's protectors, she must also overcome her timidity about making a life for herself.
Sensing an unease at home, Ma-Chan's mother returns alone to Japan and Ma-Chan shares her "Diary as Home," the notes she has taken about the months they have been on their own. "If Papa reads this," Ma-Chan's mother reasons after reading it, "he might come to realize that, just because he's rowed himself out into the stormy sea of a `pinch,' it's shameful to be so absentmindedly concerned with himself...." Deciding to send the journal to K, the family agrees that the title is too dull for the many events that have taken place. "How about A Quiet Life?" Eeyore suggests. "That's what our life's all about!"
-- Robin Bradford