Since his first novel published in 1999, Aki Shimazaki has been delivering his little fables focused on the human condition at a very regular pace – literally once a year for 10 years.
Result: a good twenty novels published in nearly 25 years, divided into several long cycles. Nire is part of the fourth that the Sino-Quebec author began three years ago, entitled A bell without a clapper, but the author always ensures that it is not necessary to have read a whole cycle to understand each of its parts.
Nire is the other side of Semi, which came out two years ago, in which we observed a woman with Alzheimer’s through the eyes of her husband. This time, the couple’s son is the narrator, but you can really take the story as it is. In Nire, Nobuki, who is the father of two children, has a hard time accepting that his mother no longer recognizes him. But when he discovers (much) more about her by reading her diary, he will begin a path that will allow him to understand her better, and to communicate better.
Nire is a book about memory and the family, that of blood and that which one chooses. On heredity and inheritance too, what we transmit and what we receive, what we remember and what we forget. But even if we appreciate, as always, this so simple way that the author uses to say things, we have the impression that she got a little lost in her demonstrations which go in several directions and abuse coincidences. Thus, the few moments of intense emotions that she always knows how to create are not enough to make this Nire one of his best vintages. It’s normal that it happens sometimes, and it won’t prevent us from coming back to it over the next few years.
Nire
Aki Shimazaki
South Acts
136 pages