Goenawan’s protagonists are each at the centre of their own story. Goenawan cements her own style here, most notably through her clever use of perspective. The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida stands tall and strong all on its own. But this is also far from a derivative novel. It’s clear that Goenawan has a deep affection for Tokyo life, and for Japanese art and literature. The remote mountaintop village and its surrounding forest the young hopeless romantic protagonist the damaged but confident young woman those ghostly, supernatural threads the importance placed on a cat and its disappearance - Goenawan is having a lot of fun playing Murakami bingo with her story and characters and, reader, I am here for it. It’s this supernatural tinge, blended with the book’s settings - both time and place - and its emphasis on messy love and intense grief, which so delightfully calls to mind that distinct Murakami style.

Goenawan here stitches just a few supernatural threads into the fabric of her novel threads which don’t show until the final third of the novel. Split into three parts, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is a three-dimensional story that moves seamlessly from the distant past to the recent past to the present, painting a colourful image of Miwako Sumida that grows in detail as the story gains momentum.ĭespite not having been written by a Japanese novelist, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida strongly and elegantly echoes (as I’ve already mentioned) the style and tone of manga like Erased and Orange, and most vividly the novels of Haruki Murakami.

Ryusei’s older sister, Fumi, is the owner of an art studio she takes Miwako under her wing for a time before Miwako eventually leaves Tokyo behind. Less than a year before her death, however, Miwako met Ryusei, a lovestruck young man who becomes a dear friend to Miwako, while remaining hopeful for more. Self-assured, thick-skinned, and consciously distant from other people, she only had one true friend: Chie.

Miwako Sumida was a student at Waseda University. Our three protagonists – Ryusei, Chie, and Fumi – are left to pick up the pieces of their own lives, recently shattered by the death of their friend. While working at a mountain retreat, she took a ladder into the forest and hanged herself from a large tree.

The titular Miwako Sumida is the axel around which this wheel of complex characters spins, each one taking a turn to narrate the story and impress upon us the kind of person Miwako Sumida was. Set during the shift from 80s to 90s Tokyo, as Japan’s great economic bubble is getting ready to burst, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumidatraces the lives of a handful of lovable but flawed young women and men.

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