“Life is like a candle. She cannot light or blow out her flame herself,” writes Ogawa Ito. When a resident dies at the Maison du Lion, a candle is lit at the entrance to the premises. It is in this end-of-life house that Shizuku, a woman who has only a few months left to live, goes.
The island where the residence is located, in the Seto Inland Sea, in Japan, is of great beauty; it is an enchanting, almost marvelous place, which the author of Tsubaki Stationery.
Every Sunday, a special snack is served to residents to immerse them in their fondest memories. Shizuku, she learns there to make peace with her past, to accept her approaching death and to appreciate her last moments of life by changing her way of seeing things, so that her last journey will be peaceful.
Despite the presence of the Grim Reaper throughout the story, it is a poetic novel that unfolds over the pages, airy and soothing, as luminous as the universe of Icelandic Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. And we savor it like a creamy dessert served on the finest porcelain, to remind us that happiness often lies in the simplest pleasures.
lion’s snack
Ogawa Ito (translated from Japanese by Déborah Pierret-Watanabe)
Editions Picquier
272 pages