Child of Fortune
This is a 1978 book by Yūko Tsushima, a Japanese writer. It takes place in the present and focuses on one character, Kōko, a thirty-six year old single mother. The point of view is Kōko's only.
The novel only covers about 4-5 months of time, and sometimes the chapters skip between a month or more, but is filled out a great deal with Kōko's own thoughts. While the novel explains the happenings between Kōko and her family, Kōko often retreats into her mind, mainly her memories. She shares a great deal about her childhood and her college life, and she keeps going back to these memories to make sense of her life and her relationships with those around her.
Kōko was married as a result of pregnancy. This doesn't seem to be portrayed as unusual, as several characters in the book go off and "register a legal marriage" when pregnancy or childbirth happens, as if it is done with a snap of the fingers, to make the whole affair legitimate. No doubt things don't work out too well, I think, and in Kōko's case she gets divorced when the child is still a toddler. She also has affairs with a couple of other men later, partly to try and show her child what it means to love another adult. This doesn't work out too well, either. Kōko lives in her own apartment, by herself, which her family (mainly her sister's family) don't approve of. Her daughter has ended up living with her sister's family more and more until Kōko rarely saw her. And now, as the book opens, she realizes she may be pregnant again.
As she keeps going back into the past to make sense of the present, Kōko tries to figure out where to live, how to deal with her rather distant daughter, how to deal with her exes, whether to have an abortion, how to keep on working (she gives piano lessons), and various things.
This is a rather different book. I'm not used to these constant leaps into the past, both memories and dreams (and sometimes Kōko confuses memories and dreams, sometimes they melt together), but it was something I could identify with, somewhat. That's a good thing, as the sleeping with different guys, pregnancies, and abortions, are not. I didn't like Kōko for a long time; she was pretty selfish, and I thought she was a bad mother. I grew to sympathize with her more and more though, and as I learned more about her past I think I could understand why she acted the way she did. The ending was good, if abrupt: Kōko decides to become truly independent, and it is implied that she stops sleeping with a certain guy or two (which I think is necessary for her independence). I was left wanting to know more about what happens after, which is also a good thing.
The novel only covers about 4-5 months of time, and sometimes the chapters skip between a month or more, but is filled out a great deal with Kōko's own thoughts. While the novel explains the happenings between Kōko and her family, Kōko often retreats into her mind, mainly her memories. She shares a great deal about her childhood and her college life, and she keeps going back to these memories to make sense of her life and her relationships with those around her.
Kōko was married as a result of pregnancy. This doesn't seem to be portrayed as unusual, as several characters in the book go off and "register a legal marriage" when pregnancy or childbirth happens, as if it is done with a snap of the fingers, to make the whole affair legitimate. No doubt things don't work out too well, I think, and in Kōko's case she gets divorced when the child is still a toddler. She also has affairs with a couple of other men later, partly to try and show her child what it means to love another adult. This doesn't work out too well, either. Kōko lives in her own apartment, by herself, which her family (mainly her sister's family) don't approve of. Her daughter has ended up living with her sister's family more and more until Kōko rarely saw her. And now, as the book opens, she realizes she may be pregnant again.
As she keeps going back into the past to make sense of the present, Kōko tries to figure out where to live, how to deal with her rather distant daughter, how to deal with her exes, whether to have an abortion, how to keep on working (she gives piano lessons), and various things.
This is a rather different book. I'm not used to these constant leaps into the past, both memories and dreams (and sometimes Kōko confuses memories and dreams, sometimes they melt together), but it was something I could identify with, somewhat. That's a good thing, as the sleeping with different guys, pregnancies, and abortions, are not. I didn't like Kōko for a long time; she was pretty selfish, and I thought she was a bad mother. I grew to sympathize with her more and more though, and as I learned more about her past I think I could understand why she acted the way she did. The ending was good, if abrupt: Kōko decides to become truly independent, and it is implied that she stops sleeping with a certain guy or two (which I think is necessary for her independence). I was left wanting to know more about what happens after, which is also a good thing.