Clarissa Goenawan's 'Rainbirds' (2018) has been sitting in the unread pile for a few months. Managed to read it before it disappeared into a strange pile of unread books that would only be discovered six months later. Oof. Okaaay, this book isn't unpleasant to read. But it isn't enjoyable to me. Not a genre I'm keen on, and the plot isn't arresting enough. As a whodunnit, it's too draggy. (Reviews here, here and here.)
Keiko Ishida is murdered in a fictional rural town of Akakawa in 1990s Japan. Her younger brother, protagonist Ren rushed over to understand his older sister's recent life and quietly investigates her murder in order to understand her life in the last few years. Ren and Keiko were very close as kids, but after Keiko left to live in Akakawa and Ren began his university life, they kind of grew apart a little.
In Akakawa, Ren begins teaching at the cram school that Keiko taught at, and stayed at the home she lived in with Mr and Mrs Katou, a prominent name in town. The couple had secrets of their own too. They weren't involved in Keiko's death, but they knew what happened to her prior. I really don't know why the author threw in the side plots. In re-tracing Keiko's steps, Ren hopes to find salvation for himself (and his love life) and his relationship with his sister too. Some parts went off tangent for a bit, as though meandering through without a real purpose except for the characters in the book.
Love, unrequited love, misplaced love and all that run through in the book, making it just that tad annoying for me. But I suppose that's how all of us teenagers were back then, and even now, for those of us unable to figure out our emotions. The hidden aspects of Keiko's life, her relationships and one that left her broken, unfolds through Ren's dreams, a little girl pigtails, encounters with various characters who flit in and out of his life, and a final eventual piece of puzzle that helped him understand Keiko's life in Akakawa supplied in the form of documents from a now defunct clinic where Keiko terminated her pregnancy in the second trimester. In the end, he confirmed his suspicion that Keiko was his half-sister, who had returned to Akakawa to find her birth mother, but failed. By the end of the book, Keiko's murder wasn't exactly solved, but Ren let it go and chose to return to Tokyo after finding out what he needed to know. It's perhaps hinted, in the form of a missing woman, Keiko's lover's wife.
To be honest, I hated the man. I wanted to beat him senseless, but it would only disgrace my sister's memory and offer him atonement. I didn't want him to think he could pay for his mistakes by taking punishment. Let him drown in guilt instead.
As much as I wanted his wife to be caught, I couldn't bring myself to go to the police. I still felt the instinct to protect Seven Stars, who'd done nothing wrong and had now lost her mother. Her parents' actions going public could ruin her life, and Mr. Nakajima's involvement in everything could remove her father, her only remaining family. I knew how hard it had been to grow up alone, eating alone at a table for four, going without parents to school ceremonies, having no one to share osechi on New Year's... The last thing I wanted was to subject Seven Stars to that same loneliness.
And, deep down, I knew I would go to any lengths to protect my sister's honor, even though I would hate myself for it forever.
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