森に眠る魚 [Mori ni nemuru sakana]

by Mitsuyo Kakuta, 角田光代

都内文教地区の町で出会った５人の母親。育児を通して互いに心を許しあう彼女たちだったが、その関係性は徐々に変容してゆく。引き金となったのは小学校受験なのか、それとももっと他の何かなのか。――あの子さえいなければ。私さえいなければ。５人のせめぎあう感情が胸にひりひりと迫る、著者母子小説の衝撃作！

365 pages, Hardcover

First published December 10, 2008

About the author

Mitsuyo Kakuta (角田光代, 1967–) set her sights on becoming a writer from an early age. Her debut novel—Kōfuku na yūgi (A Blissful Pastime), written while she was a university student—received the Kaien Prize for New Writers in 1990. She has been working continuously as an author ever since, never having had to support herself with a separate job. Three nominations for the Akutagawa Prize serve as a measure of the promise with which she was regarded from early in her career. Then, at the encouragement of an editor, she shifted toward the entertainment end of the literary spectrum, where she garnered a much broader readership with works depicting the lives of women in her generation, from their mid-thirties to forties. After publishing two brilliant novels in 2002, Ekonomikaru paresu (Economical Palace) and Kūchū teien (Hanging Garden), she went on to win the Naoki Prize for the second half of 2004 with Woman on the Other Shore (tr. 2007). Her successes continued with The Eighth Day (tr. 2010), which received the 2007 Chūō Kōron Literary Prize and was made into a televised drama series as well as a movie; the book sold more than a million copies, vaulting her into the ranks of Japan's best-selling authors. In 2012 she added to her list of honors by earning the Shibata Renzaburō Award for her novel Kami no tsuki (Paper Moon), and the Izumi Kyōka Prize for her volume of short stories Kanata no ko (The Children Beyond).

Mitsuyo Kakuta is currently working on translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.
(source: BooksFromJapan.jp)

Reviews

[Shirlee Chia · Rating 4 out of 5]

看得心驚肉跳的。身為女人所以對於這些媽媽們的內心世界多少是能想像得到的，但女人變成媽媽後都會性情大變嗎？
五個不同階層背景的女人因為孩子而結識也因為孩子而決裂、嘴上說著不攀比但心裡在意得不行、然後心理壓力大得開始有心理病之類的...我真的，除了害怕之外，不知道該做何感想。
是這社會，這世界加諸在女人，在母親身上的沉沉枷鎖重擔，讓她們變成這樣的。
我也許在一個絕妙的時間點看了這本書。

[Sheila Chou · Rating 4 out of 5]

把女人之間的嫉妒、猜疑、比較…等複雜的關係寫得十分的細膩，這套看似青春期小女生在玩的小團體遊戲，卻發生在一群家庭主婦身上。
剛認識時那美好的友情，卻在一些小事情上造成彼此的誤會，因此埋下了日後的炸彈，只能說女人的友情真是不堪一擊啊！
這本書看到後面讓我感到有點不耐煩，每個人內心那些逐漸崩壞的心理真的很可怕，她們不斷覺得『我會這樣都是xxx的錯』，永遠都可以找到理由來合理化自己的行為，在人類的世界裡，這部分真是寫實得可怕。
看完這本書最大的心得就是：『我絕對不要變成這種母親！』