How Many Names & Identities Can You Have?

[THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS.]

I waited a long while for the digital copy of Boston-based Singaporean author Yu-Mei Balasingamchow's 'Names Have Been Changed' (June 2026). This has been a novel years in the making! I'll get around to buying a hard copy soon enough. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)

38-year-old Ophir (not her real name) hosts a podcast while being on the run from a crime she never intended to commit. As an accidental fugitive at 27 years old, she skipped town (Singapore) with $60,000 in cash, and traversed Bangkok, Tokyo, Ecuador, London and Colorado. Along the way, she does odd jobs; became a hostess at nightclubs and takes on waitressing gigs for income. She changes her name often and takes on new identities to evade arrest. She has been Kara, Amelie, Hui Ying, Kaylee and Noora.

She longs for human companionship. She is lonely and homesick. But she doesn't want to go to jail. She wants to remain free, even if it's on the run. She has led this life for ten years. Then it's 2020, the world goes into lockdown, and her father suddenly died in a traffic accident. Her mother died when she was born, so she felt this parent's death keenly. She's the youngest of a total of six children in this family. She's close to her brother Jacob, but she is unable to contact her family in Singapore or attend his funeral. Hosting this podcast makes her feel less alone. She can talk, people can hear her, but no one will know who she is. Well, unless they know her by voice alone.

I'm not sure that retelling your life story publicly while being on the run is a good idea. Ophir was a voice actor in Singapore getting by okay, leading a pretty normal lifestyle but wishing for extra cash like everyone else. She was pulled into a scam as a money mule by her best friend. She only wanted to make extra cash, but it was a crime. We know what she's running from. So where is she running to? Will there be a name or an identity she finally settles on?

London began peacefully enough, but reached a shocking end when Ophir ran into a familiar face and things spiraled out of control. Her London sojourn ended rather dramatically. But it was also in London that she got an opportunity to go to Colorado for... ... redemption. She met a Singaporean doctor who is a political exile, along with her husband. And the good doctor treated her injury and sent her to Colorado based on blind trust. The doctor has been in exile for 40 years, and she has stopped counting. 

Every Sunday night, Ah Mun paid me in cash, and I took off. She never asked where I lived.

At the time I was renting a room from a Bangladeshi widow and her sister above their curry house. My first job in London was for a cousin of theirs, cleaning the office at his car repair workshop. I think they let me move in because I looked pretty harmless, which, as you know, I am, unless you tempt me with thousands and thousands of dollars. Also, maybe no one wanted to live above the exhaust vents of their restaurant. By then I knew there were worse things than the smell of stale food and kitchen grease, and once I was spending my days at Golden Pearl, I honestly couldn't tell you whether I reeked more of chicken tikka masala or Cantonese wok hei.

Of course food got highlighted! Hahaha. Food is always a trigger point of memories and cultural references in novels. We have Singaporean food spoken of and eaten. After you read this story, you might not want to have Singapore Fried Noodles for a bit. Heck, I don't even like Singapore Fried Noodles in any city. If the kitchen ditches the curry powder and ease up on the oil, it would be almost palatable.

[STOP READING HERE > SPOILERS ARE NEXT.]

Colorado felt like redemption because it was. The 'job' in a small town in Denver was easier than manual labor and scrubbing toilets, and she had food and a roof over her head. Izati was closer to her in age, and somehow, accepted her and her past. It didn't take a genius to find out Ophir/then-Noora's true identity.

Each podcast Ophir puts out, is a chapter in the book. During the lockdown years, the podcasts somehow went viral and reached thousands. People knew who she is. She didn't think it would be such a 'hit', but it is. Television and interview offers stream in. It seems to be only a matter of time before the Singapore police get a start on identifying her location and identity, and come knocking. 

She also has a podcast producer named Tina. Of course it's a pseudonym. Tina is smart, protective and loyal. She goes through the emails received about Ophir and such. She doesn't pry or judge. She simply is there for Ophir. And oddly, Ophir didn't double-cross her, and for the first time, she felt supported and less alone. Tina is Izati. I knew it! There were plenty of hints in the lines.

The ending was expected, yet unexpected. I thought her loneliness would be a huge factor in deciding to turn herself in. Especially when her closest sibling Jacob came in search of her. And found her. He had never stopped looking for the past decade. He persuaded her to come home with him to Singapore. He outlined a possible life in Singapore after doing time, and offered her sanctuary at his home. But he has a partner, and two children. She wasn't wanting to ruin his life now. He managed to even convince her to get to the airport in Los Angeles, check in and get to the passenger boarding area.  

She hesitated, and made her decision. She can't go home to Singapore. It's not home anymore. She has done this for 10 years. She could continue to do this. It's her life now. She has chosen it.

Being away for so long, it was all I had to hang on to. It's not going to be the same, though. It'll never be like it was, and it's not the place I'm looking for anymore. They'll put me in a box—a box I deserve, to be fair, but I don't want that or what comes after, starting over and also trying to live down what I've done. Why do I have to keep paying for it? Haven't I carried enough my whole life?

I can't be the person they want me to be. I know how to live like this now. I can do it.

I should move quickly. I don't have much time.

I don't see Jacob, I think he's still at the gate. Waiting. He trusts me. Don't think about that.

Is this a book about migrant culture? I think not. If it is, it makes a very odd reference point to what Singapore is about. I look at the book as one that explores the Singaporean diaspora. Yet it's uniquely Singaporean. The multi-culturalism and inherent prejudices come up. We see Singlish in the lines. We have Malay too. I didn't listen to the audiobook, so I wouldn't know about the different accents adopted by the narrator. But I heard a sample of it, and some friends say that the audiobook narration is excellent.

New Shoes Are Always Significant

Sure, it's a story of migrants and the lives they have carved out in their new hometown. Each story is unique to every migrant. In this, we have the narrator who seems to have made it good for himself in London. This is 'New Shoes' by Hisham Matar, published in The New Yorker on September 6, 2026.

A young man left Cairo at 18 years old and worked in Italy and France, and finally settled in London. After eight years, he now owns a string of small newsagent shops. Money was tight back then, and he was the one who was able to leave Cairo instead of his older brother. Once he found stability in London, he was able to send more money home to his family in Cairo. His family warned him to stay away from politics because "politics brings only ruin".

I hate London. I hate and love it all at once. I haven’t told my brother this, out of fear that he would realize we only hate and love the places we believe we will never leave. I know how he thinks. Nor have I told him that I have always accepted that people like me are unwanted here. Needed, perhaps, but not wanted. It is plain to see. Nor have I told him that I learned to be O.K. with this, that in London, as in life, it is impossible to go on without a degree of indifference. You have to not give a shit.

All this to say that I am fine. I have learned to be away and I am doing well. Discovered a talent for business. I now manage not one but three shops, what here they call newsagents.

The story opens with said young man who is now much older. 12 years have passed since he left Cairo. He has only visited Cairo 12 times since, once a year. He talks to his older brother over the phone regularly, and he was told that he was still seen in Cairo walking down the street just some months ago. At cafes, in bookshops, etc. These played in his mind. He was homesick too, for his birth city of Zamalek. He hopes to return one day and make a life there. 

The brother's conversation topics got weirder and weirder. Every call included him telling the narrator that someone swore that they spotted him Cairo. There's this idea of a doppelganger of the narrator walking around in Cairo when the person in question lived in London, and only visits once a year. 

Readers begin to wonder if it's the brother's memories of the narrator that's presenting itself in these forms, or perhaps afflicted by a sort of dementia. We don't even know if these friends actually told the brother they saw the narrator, or the encounters are in the brother's head.  

I sensed, in my brother’s accounts of these supposed sightings, a tone of wavering disappointment. After his initial amusement, a vague concern lodged itself in his throat, coloring his words. What is even stranger is that I, too, began to sense myself divided, half here and half there. And so, whenever he said that someone had seen me at a particular café or bookshop or walking along one of the streets he and I know so well, I began to feel that I was elsewhere, daydreaming, as though the occasion had birthed in me a violent longing for home and my family. My present self, the self that had left and was getting on with the business of daily life in London, had somehow become divorced from the former and now somewhat hypothetical version of the man I might have become had I remained on my native soil. As the days rolled on, I held on to this superstition that I was cleaving in two. I began to feel lonesome, even more so than before, which made it all the more disturbing that in those alleged accounts of me in Cairo I was either alone or embroiled in some uneasy dispute. My life in London, the life I had cobbled together with the barest of routines, grew thin and unconvincing. It now seldom felt real.

After yet another odd phone call with the brother recounting someone else who said had seen the narrator in an argument with an older man, the narrator was shook. This was a phone call that happened after three weeks of radio silence from the brother. 

The book ended with the narrator buying a pair of fancy shoes at a fancy boutique on Jermyn Street. He chose a pair of lace-ups in horse leather. It cost eight hundred pounds. There was a 14-day return policy as long as the shoes weren't worn. He made a conscious decision to put it on immediately, and walked out of the store wearing it. It's a significant gesture. 

I stuffed my old pair in the box and walked to Trafalgar Square. I sat outside the Admiralty pub, lifted my foot up to the sky, and took a photo with Nelson on his column in the background. I sent it to my brother, with the words “New shoes.”

I could see that he had seen it. I watched the screen, expecting him to reply. I looked down at my feet and felt shame and regret. Eight hundred pounds is fifty-six thousand Egyptian pounds, I calculated. That is equivalent to half of my father’s annual salary. All spent on a pair of shoes. And my feet hurt in them. The man in the shop had said that’s because they would need to be broken in. I put the phone in my pocket. The sun was out. It was a nice evening. I decided to walk all the way home.

The ending isn't exactly left open-handed. The shopping spoke volumes. In an interview with Cressida Leyshon, the author is asked why the ending is such, 

At the end of the story, the narrator decides to go shopping for shoes on Jermyn Street, one of London’s toniest destinations when it comes to buying shirts, shoes, and accessories for men. Why did you want to send him there? What do the shoes represent to him?

I’d rather not spell it out. A good reader will know.

I laughed. Yeah. New shoes, as the titled suggested. And on Jermyn Street. But of course. I got that. It's a rite of passage, sort of. He absolutely would have to. 

Aging in this Age of Gloom & Doom

Steeled myself to read Helen Simpson's 'Lub Dub Lub Dub Lub Dub', published in The New Yorker on August 30, 2026. It's never easy to read stories about mortality, aging and friendships. 

Tracey and Lois met for coffee on a hot May morning in London, in the middle of a heatwave. Right now, they're discussing about stovetops and Tracey's new cooker. They are old friends, and are in constant contact. 

Tracey is worried about her recently retired 65-year-old husband Adam's heart, and is attending a CPR workshop after this. Lois is on her way to catch the 10.07 train at Euston to visit her 92-year-old elderly mother living in the Midlands. For all purposes, the story recounts another day in their lives.

The story ends with an oven exploding. Tracey stays at home while Adam heads out to a tennis session. He has been very taken with exercise. Tracey was simply reading while heating up a lasagna when the oven door exploded. Tempered glass bits went everywhere. Luckily she wasn't cut or bleeding.  

I didn't know what to make of it this story. The mundane-ness of it all. Now, the title. It could simply be a reference to the steady march of the days till one dies. Like a heartbeat, plodding steadily till it stops beating. No one could tell when.

Lub dub lub dub lub dub is the noise of the heart beating when you listen with a stethoscope.

In an interview with the same journal, the author is asked if she still envisioned London to be headed for gloom and doom in 2040. She said yes. She had written an earlier story 'Diary of an Interesting Year' (2009) about Britain in 2040, after the 'Big Melt'. The author had taken her interest in climate science research and applied it to the storylines in her writing. 

The author is then asked how old friends would help with this doom and gloom that seems to be the world's future, at this pace it's headed towards.

Later that day, Tracey joins a real-estate agent, Ollie, to look at a flat. She and her husband are thinking about moving into a smaller space. “Downsize and Die,” Ollie says they call it in the office, before catching himself. For Tracey, this is a line to share with Lois. Would aging be a lot grimmer without an old friend like this?

Oh, but surely friends are the flower of life all the way through! Having two or three people on the same wavelength is the ultimate luxury, whether you’re twenty-three or forty-six or ninety-two. Though you’re right—old friends become rarer as the big scythe starts to swish more frequently. And, while you can make new friends, by definition it’s impossible to make new old friends—so you lose your shared past as well.

The unusual thing about Tracey and Lois is that, as well as communicating via WhatsApp, they’ve actually managed to meet IRL and exchange an IRL hug.

Mending Familial Relationships

Woah, the storyline of dementia hits so hard. It's scary. It can be any one of us. We wonder who we would want to make peace with in our old age, or when facing impending death. This is 'The Blight' by Emma Cline, published in The New Yorker on August 9, 2026. This is adapted from the author's recently published novel 'Switzy'.

Protagonist David Hastings is grappling with the onset of dementia. Along with his dedicated assistant Cody, he's traveling to Switzerland for a voluntary-assisted death. Before that, he stops in London to visit his daughter Rebecca, and have one last dinner with her.

David is a flawed character, and hasn't been the best father to Rebecca. He and his ex-wife Annabel divorced when Rebecca was ten. He didn't tell her about his diagnosis. He didn't want her to know. He only said something about retirement. And mentioned about a work project in Zurich. He didn't tell her what he would be doing there in truth. Rebecca didn't quite know how to have a relationship with him. But she tried to be civil.

We don't know if David's cognitive declined allowed him to see more of his life and what remains of it than when he was healthy. At this point, Rebecca only assumed he's retiring, and helpfully sent a string of articles about filling up leisurely hours and reminding him about taking supplements in order to keep healthy and prevent decline. However, he kept his vitamins away in his drawer. "The blight had come for him; it was too late."

Many opportunities to extend the meal. Coffee? Dessert?

To not choose these offered extensions seemed sad, an acknowledgment that the night had been only O.K., that no spark of familial magic had overcome them. And they were as they had always been, stiff with each other, missing the mark.

Like those holiday outings, post-divorce, with itineraries planned out by Annabel. Even at the peak of her anger, she’d remained the wholly capable stage director of everyone’s emotions. Take the girl here, look at these lights, these window displays, there’s a holiday village in the children’s department, get an early dinner reservation at the restaurant on the highest floor—she’ll like the glass elevator.

He’d been grateful. Enormously so.

It seemed to be an awkward meeting. The conversation topics are stilted. He seemed to be out of it. The story ended on a neutral note. Dinner and dessert were all done, and they were about to leave. There isn't a hint that Rebecca is aware of what her father has planned. There isn't an indication that she thinks something isn't quite right with David, at least not from what we have read. It was just another thing, like she would have to meet her father at some point, of which was tonight's meal. 

In an interview with the same journal, the author is asked if David and Rebecca had similar ideas about this meeting,

We see the dinner through David’s eyes. Rebecca seems nervous, on edge, unsure how to communicate with him. Do you think that her take on the meal would be different from what he imagines her experience to be?

Who can ever know for sure what another is experiencing? Whatever David imagines is, of course, just his imagining. She brings her own little universe to the dinner, in the same way that David does, and these universes intersect but don’t really illuminate each other in any helpful way. Or maybe there are flashes of it—of genuine understanding—but those are rare. That distance—the difficulty of truly making contact with another person from the limits of the self—interests me as a writer. David is especially marooned, a man of a certain generation in a culture that’s rapidly slipping into illegibility for him.

You Can't Trust Family Either

I waded into cross-generational dynamics and a young girl's sexual maturity and views of the world in 'Hidden Life' by Madhuri Vijay, published in The New Yorker on August 16, 2026. 'Family', is really a double-edged sword, and not to be blindly trusted. 

We have fourteen-year-old Nidhi from Bangalore is sent to stay with a great-aunt in Madras while her mother remains at home to navigate a miscarriage. Great-Aunt Jaya is her father's eldest Aunt. At this house in Madras, she meets a cast of characters who shapes her budding views of human sexuality.

Jaya Aunty's son Shankar passed away before he turned thirty. He married a Padmini who is mentally disabled, but that was kept a secret till it was revealed after the marriage. She still lives in the house, doing all the cooking, shopping, cleaning and all chores, excepting sweeping and mopping. These two duties are done by a daily helper Ambika. 

There's this odd human who is a Sudhir Desai, a businessman who is Kenyan. He simply appears in Jaya Aunty's house every few months and is welcomed, since he seems to remind her of the deceased son. Sudhir has no problems taking in all of Jaya Aunty's generosity. We thought he might be an opportunist, but it turns out otherwise.

Her father's fond memories of his stay with Jaya Aunty contrasted sharply with hers. He said she had books. As such, she didn't even pack a book on this trip. At the house, she found none. She finally found them in Sudhir's room because he had the shelves and books moved up from the living room. Sudhir's room is kept locked when he isn't visiting. When he is here, in the nights, he keeps his room door locked.

She knew that she was modulating herself for Sudhir Desai’s benefit—it evidently amused him to hear such harshness from someone so young—and she knew, too, that she wasn’t the only one changing in his presence. Jaya Aunty had been watching less TV since his arrival; she found it far more entertaining to watch him. Everything he did made her shriek with laughter. A button came off his shirt one day, and he asked for a needle and thread. “Needle! Thread!” Jaya Aunty cackled. “You bachelors! Manage everything on your own, is it? Chee! Padmini will fix it in one minute flat.”

It was Padmini, however, who was the most altered. Gone was the garrulous woman Nidhi had known for close to three weeks. There were no more sweet, impractical presents. No surprise groundnuts. Padmini became as disgruntled as Ambika, clomping through her work and barely speaking. Ignoring her better instincts, Nidhi cornered Padmini and tried to probe for a reason.

They were standing in the kitchen, and Padmini spun to face Nidhi. Her expression was distorted with anger. She picked up a tomato from the cutting board, held it under Nidhi’s nose, and squeezed. Juice and seeds spurted from between her fingers. Before she could pick up another one, Nidhi backed out of the room.

Luckily for Nidhi, Sudhir Desai didn't do anything to her beyond chats about life, books and Annie Besant. One night, he left due to 'an emergency'. He didn't even sleep the night. He offered his cool room to Nidhi. And just perhaps, he had always kept his room locked because of Padmini. 

Padmini had gone into the room, and used Nidhi as Sudhir's substitute to work off remnant and latent sexual frustrations. Eeeeps. Nothing penetrative, thank goodness, but it was an absolute violation. Nidhi now has an inkling of what happened and what might have transpired. Us, readers too. The teenager wondered if her father had experienced what he did. If he had, he would have blocked it out entirely because he wouldn't have sent his daughter there if he had remembered. 

In an interview with the journal, the author is asked if Nidhi's increasing awareness is healthy, and how her experiences in Madras might have shaped her views. 

Nidhi’s parents are progressive and quite open with their daughter about sexual matters. Is their attitude very unusual for this time and place? When Nidhi returns home, having had a bewildering exposure to sexuality, she feels, pleasantly, more detached from her parents than she did before. Do you see this as a healthy sign of her increasing maturity and independence, or do you sense that her experience in Madras has damaged her in some way?

I don’t know for sure that Nidhi has been damaged, but, even if she has, I don’t believe that damage is an impediment to the acquisition of maturity or wisdom. One of the questions I’m asking in the story, I suppose, is exactly what it means to be mature or wise in the first place. In Jaya and her parents, Nidhi is presented with two opposing models for maturity, at least when it comes to sexual matters. Her parents approach sexuality head on, almost with glee, which is certainly unusual for their time and place. One gets the sense that they rather enjoy being provocative. Jaya, by contrast, favors insinuation; she allows what is unspeakable to remain unspoken. By the end, Nidhi comes to find both approaches inadequate, even self-protective. I’d like to believe that she begins, on that train ride home, to grope her way toward a third, more profound approach, though she is a long way from articulating what it might be.

How Hard Did You Have to Study?

I had a read of 'Testing' by Min Jin Lee (acclaimed author of 'Pachinko'), published in The New Yorker on July 19, 2026.

Protagonist Bo Koh is a dutiful first-born Korean son of Helen and John Koh. He pushes himself past his limits to reach the academic excellence that he seems to want. Bo is the eldest of three children, the younger ones being DH and Mido. The Koh family moved around the world loads. He grew up in the Australia and the US, but is taking the life-defining Suneung, the intense eight-hour Korean university entrance exam. From all accounts, his parents are reasonable and didn't see a need to push their eldest son to succeed to their definitions. 

The piece is an adapted from the author's upcoming novel 'American Hagwon' (to be released in September 2026). It follows the same protagonist and his family in this excerpt, exploring themes of immigrant identity, family duty, and the crushing pressure of academic achievement. 

As soon as Bo and his classmates finished the bongosa, they rushed back to their hagwon. Their tutors had been more or less flying blind, because there were almost no prior tests from which to teach. Each student, fresh from having taken the exam, was asked to recall the test questions, and three tutors recorded the questions and typed out their speculated answers. The bongosa question Bo would never forget was “Describe the difference between digital and analog.” For his answer, he had written that a digital clock stated a moment in time, whereas an analog clock revealed the process of time. Bo’s tutor said that this answer was terrific. Not that it mattered.

Bo’s Suneung score was what kept him out. A perfect score was 200. He received 153, a strong showing but not invulnerable, and, predictably, given his focus on studying for the college exams, his high-school G.P.A. had fallen to the lower end of the second stanine, so he was no longer in the top four per cent nationally.

I see the titles and shuddered. PTSD from my own school days when we had to study endlessly for exams that made no sense to me, but I exceled in taking them and getting great results anyway. What sort of education and information I retained, is questionable. The point was to get those A-grades, isn't it? 

Bo didn't make the Suneung on his first attempt. His girlfriend Ara Yang did. He wanted to take the exams again next November. But for his parents, it isn't so simple. They had to move back to Sydney because there wasn't work in Seoul. If Bo wants to take the Suneung again, that meant paying another year of hagwon fees, as well as maintaining homes in both Seoul and Sydney, stretching the family's finances. They couldn't keep asking family for help too. 

Bo stayed in Seoul at the gosiwon near his hagwon, funded by his Aunt Sonya, dutifully preparing for his exams. He wanted to make it to Yonsei University. ultimately failed the Suneung thrice. On the day of the release of the results of his third try at 22 years old, he went to work at a convenience store. His earnings enabled him to stay at the gosiwon while he mulls over his next steps. His Aunt and his parents would prefer him to go to America than to waste time on Seoul's education system.  

In an interview with the same journal, the author is asked why Bo is so persistent about taking this examination when he doesn't actually need it. Is it a cultural thing?

Bo spends three years preparing for and taking the Suneung (three times). His persistence doesn’t make a lot of sense to those around him, given that he has U.S. citizenship and could pursue his education in a much less restrictive environment there. Why do you think he insists on it?

Bo was born in New Jersey while his father, John, was working in the New York area. Owing to his father’s career, Bo and his two siblings went to school in New Jersey, Sydney, and Seoul. Bo, the eldest, identifies strongly with Korea, and although he is by birth a U.S. citizen, he wants to know what his life would have been like if he had been born in Seoul and stayed put there. Bo seeks a kind of stamp to prove his authenticity as a Korean, and he feels that going through with this exam, which even some native-born Koreans are loath to take, will provide that. Bo is a deeply principled young person, and I admire him enormously, but the high-achieving student can sometimes suffer from hubris, rigidity, and impracticality. That said, I respect his stubbornness and anxieties.

Emotional Threads

It's like a story that hangs in mid-air, pretty much like everyone's lives. I suppose that's what this story is about. This is 'Gatekeeping' by Bryan Washington, published on July 12, 2026 in The New Yorker.

The narrator is a quiet man who works at Houston airport pushing passengers in wheelchairs to their gates. The narrator is kinda dating a Taiwanese flight attendant named JT, but it's an uncommitted relationship floating over two years. JT doesn't seem to mind, and he sees the narrator whenever, meeting in a hotel room. The airport is a transitional space, yet it's regular like clockwork.

He meets different people, and some are regular passengers. He is privy to private details of their lives. He describes these passengers he meets, and in particular, a Carl who always flies to Paris on a Thursday morning every other week. He chats with them. And sometimes they tell him their stories, and give him gems of their life views. 

Sometimes I’m the man in the middle. A white couple I’m assisting to their Berlin flight—the husband’s in the wheelchair—snipe at each other, in hushed voices, for our entire walk to the gate.

You probably left the stove on, the wife says.

The better to burn your son’s house down, the husband says.

Leave your jacket on the security tray, he adds. It’s a rag.

I didn’t want you to feel left out, the wife says.

Don’t bother helping him out of the chair, she adds, to me, as I lead him to the metal detector. Give him something to actually do.

I smile, nodding. I am a rock and a sponge. When we finally make it to the gate, I pass the husband off to a flight attendant, an Indian twink who throws me a knowing look. But the wife stands beside me.

What if I just stay here? she says.

It is a question without an answer. And I don’t know if she wants one. So I loom beside her in silence, until last call sounds and she sighs and boards the flight.

Towards the end of the story, we finally see the narrator inviting JT to dinner at his apartment, about 20 minutes away from the airport. The first visit to his home after two years of a non-committal relationship. 

T repeated his invitation to the narrator to come visit him in Taipei and stay for a month. JT isn't going to be flying for a few months anymore, and he wouldn't able to see the narrator unless the latter goes to Taipei. The readers are left hanging about this invitation since the narrator didn't offer insights about whether he agreed.

We see the narrator back in his job, and talking loads to Carl. Is it the journeying that truly matters? Or the final decisions? The real steps taken instead of having ideas swirl in one's head? In an interview with the same journal, the author noted a hefty weigh of personal obligations and choices of being emotionally distant versus actively finding a community. My head hurts simply thinking about it. That's complicated. 

The potential reward of community can outweigh the risk of failure. And to what extent that reaching, even if only very occasionally fruitful, justifies the work of creating conditions for gentleness. The reaching and flailing toward possibility is the narrative. While I was drafting, it was important to me that every character in this story had space for complication, while still making the choice to strive for motion. They choose to actively reconfigure their language and actions to live among one another as best they know how.

A Cup of Coffee Solves Everything

I wasn't that keen to read 'Days at the Torunka Café' 「純喫茶ルンカ」(2022) by Satoshi Yagisawa, translated into English by Eric Ozawa and that version was published in late 2025. Then I thought to myself, 'How bad can it be?' Well... ... instant regret. I didn't enjoy this book as much as the author's 'Days at the Morisaki Bookshop' (2009). 

These three interconnected stories are about regret, self-worth vs one's identity, positivity, second chances, change, future, the sorts. There isn't a resolution. Whether you like them, is another thing. We simply see people picking up the pieces and getting on with their lives, preferably with a perfect cup of coffee. 

At the end of a tiny alley in Tokyo, Torunka Café that plays Chopin's piano études is run by Isao Tachibana alongside his teenaged daughter Shizuku, and a part-timer 21-year-old Shūichi Okuyama. Shizuku herself is also coping with grief over the loss of her elder sister Sumiré, and the strong emotions of an unrequited first crush on her sister's ex-boyfriend vs the steadfast support of her childhood friend Kōta. That was elaborated in the last story 'A Drop of Love'. 

The first story 'Sunday Ballerinas' saw Shūichi being enamored with a regular customer 24-yar-old Chinatsu Yukimura. I had no idea where this story was going. It was so meandering that I lost interest in the book promptly. Chinatsu comes in to the cafe once a week, and usually on a Sunday. She folds the napkins into tiny ballerinas. She hides a vulnerability from past trauma and heartbreak. She told Shūichi some odd story about them being acquainted in a past life during the French revolution, as French people of another gender and they were lovers. I had to laugh.

Then we learnt that Chinatsu and Shūichi were acquainted as children, when his father came to visit her mother. The adult parents were lovers. Chinatsu's mother passed away, and she was curious about how Shūichi was doing in Tokyo, and she came to look for him. She wasn't sure how the friendship would turn out. She simply wanted to see him because she's had a terrible childhood and she had felt better when he was around. There was redemption suggested at the end of the story. 

The second story 'The Place Where We Meet Again' saw Hiroyuki Numata meet Ayako, who is the daughter of the woman named Sanae he had dated 30 years ago. Hiro and Sanae had a relationship, but he literally ghosted Sanae and broke up with her, citing his work obligations and ambitions. He later married a shallow gaudy woman who was good for his career, but not good for anything else. Yet she refused to let him divorce her. He became an alcoholic and spiraled. 

Hiro regretted not doing more for Sanae. He used private investigators to track down Sanae, only to learn that she had long passed from cancer. He had randomly hoped to run into her daughter, Ayako. 

That's all it took to lift my spirits so much it was actually a little disconcerting. I felt like I'd found a new reason to stay in the neighborhood. Until I'd spoken with Ayako, I'd spent my time there, unable to get my bearings, feeling like a stranger in a strange land. But once I'd started talking to her, the distance I felt between me and everyone in the neighborhood seemed to go away, and I felt like I was part of things again. More than anything else, that's what made me happy. 

We learnt about Shizuku's pain in the last story 'A Drop of Love'. Her elder sister Sumiré had died ten years ago when she was seventeen. Now that Shizuku's almost seventeen and in her second year at high school, she missed her sister even more. Sumiré had fallen sick and was hospitalized; she died three months later. To cope with grief, her mother now lives away from her and the father. Her mother joined an NGO and now lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Every year, at the end of August, on the anniversary of Sumi's death, Shizuku becomes a bundle of nerves and couldn't function. The first year after Sumi's death was the hardest. In this story, we're now at the sixth anniversary.

One afternoon out and about in town, she ran into Kazuhiko Ogino, her sister's ex-boyfriend whom the family lost contact with when the sister died. Shizuku sat down with him to ask why they broke up. She didn't understand what went on between them, except that she was jealous of their closeness and bewildered by how much he cried at Sumiré's funeral. And then, she thought she might have a crush on Ogino! She took Sumi's clothes, shoes and hair clips, and began dressing like Sumi. It took her a long while to decide that she wouldn't do so anymore. She confessed to Ogino that she liked him, but she was rejected. But after that, she felt much lighter. 

Outside the window, the landscape flew by. As hard as it was to believe that after the last several days, my mind was now calm and clear.

But I won't forget that I was in love, however briefly it lasted. Deeply in love. And it's something I'll treasures. Even if the pain returns, it won't be so bad. Someday, I know, I'll fall in love again. And until that day, I'll be building up my confidence. So that when the time comes, whoever it is will see me for who I am.

Readers are offered a peek into these characters' lives, emotions and how they deal with the developments, other people's feelings and such. I don't know if I care for them. Reaching the end of the book didn't make me like them better. 

It isn't an utter waste of time reading it. It's kinda like a window into friends' lives whom we wouldn't know even if they're good friends. Some things are kept aside, kept private, and grief is sometimes not said. I sometimes don't need to know everything about friends. I only want to know if they choose to share. I'm not particularly nosy. And often, depending on one's concept or expectations of friendship, I would likely come across as not caring very much. Whatever it is, it isn't my type of book. 

How and what you make of a cup of coffee, is up to you. In the 'Translator's Note', Eric Ozawa said,

In the book, the café is quite small, with some seats at the counter and a handful of ta-bles, but like the Morisaki Bookshop, it's the center of a community of people for whom it becomes a second home.

Time seems to move differently at the Torunka Café. There's time to savor a cup of coffee, to reminisce, to confess a secret, or to read a book like this one, which celebrates the pleasures of the junkissa, a term that encompasses both those cafés and their preserved quaint charms of the Showa period as well as those distinguished by a devotion to the perfect cup of coffee.

It's Not Your Fault; We Deserve A Second Chance

I really enjoyed the dark comic wit that is 'Anxious People' (2019) by Fredrik Backman. The book was quite a delight to read. 

I'm sure many readers would have also watched the Swedish mini-series on Netflix that has been adapted from the book. The six-episode series directed by Felix Herngren was released in 2021. I like both the book and the tv series almost equally. One was well thought-out and written; the other was well produced and filmed. Good acting. 

A day before New Year's Eve, a desperate 39-year-old mother who needed to pay rent to avoid losing custody of her children attempted to rob a bank, only to discover that it didn't have cash. She fled into a nearby apartment building, stumbling into one with an open house. With a toy gun, she took a group of strangers (eight prospective buyers) hostage.

The police swarmed the outside of the building. A gunshot goes off, the apartment was covered in blood, and the woman-robber went missing. The scenes were set. We followed these released hostages to the police station to hear them give accounts of what happened. 

This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you're trying to be a reasonably good human being for.

Because there's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.

Through police interviews thankfully written and told chronologically so that I don't get confused, it's eventually revealed that the hostages swapped clothing and aided her to escape. Even a police officer got involved. 

These eight people are so different. We hear all of their stories, whether we like it or not. We gotta wade through their backgrounds in order to understand their actions and the ultimate ending to this story. We have young married and pregnant, and anxious couple Julia and Ro. There are the older wealthy married couple Anna-Lena and Roger who have a strained relationship, and tried to salvage the marriage and cope by flipping apartments in order to find their perfect home. We have calm and collected bank executive Zara in her fifities who's dealing with grief and guilt over a past client who died by suicide; we have Zara's psychologist Estelle who's an elderly, wise and eccentric widow. There's Lennart, an actor hired to act as a potential buyer to boost the property's appeal. Then, there's the incompetent and optimistic realtor at 'How's Tricks' hosting the open house. 

Then we have the two policemen who are a pair of father and son — an older Jim and a younger Jack. How Jim chose to handle the bank robber led to the ultimate resolution in the story. He had stood in the stairwell, and let the robber escape into the next apartment. The blood in the apartment was stage blood.

'Roger's right. We just have to play dumb. We can say you never took the mask off, so we can't give a description'

.....................

'Who helped her get out if it wasn't us?' Roger wants to know, eager for correct information.

No one has an answer to that, but Estelle looks down at her phone, reads a text message, and nods slowly. Then she smiles, relieved. 'She says she's okay/'

Anna-Lena smiles at that.

'Say hi from us.'

Estelle says she will.

And the bank robber got away, and found solace and stability in a new home, in the apartment of a very "kind and just-crazy enough old lady named Estelle". Years later, they're all okay. All of them. There're so many layers to this story for us to mull over. 

We celebrate very human themes of sympathy, empathy, past positive connections, about what it means to 'lend a hand'. Everyone has an internal battle and our own anxieties. However, in this story, in this unforseen event, everyone came together to 'help', and really 'helped'. 

コンビニ ::「コンビニ人間」

I didn't realize that this was such a short book. At 69 pages, this is a novella. I decided to read it in its original Japanese too. This is 'Convenience Store Woman' (2016) by Sayaka Murata. 村田沙耶香氏の「コンビニ人間」. The English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori was released in 2018.

Protagonist Keiko Furukura has always been an oddity since she was a kid. I didn't think she's odd. She's neurodivergent and marginalized. She can't decode human social cues. She's certainly got opinions that aren't shared by her family or society at large. I was laughing at her choice of action as a kid. At so many points in the story, I wanted to shout 'Leave her alone!'  

She decided to work at the local convenience store/konbini for some 18 years after graduating from university. She is uninterested in a romantic relationship or marriage. She likes the corporate employee handbook because it gives her a soul; she doesn't see it as restricting her freedom. The konbini trains them how to smile and what to say to customers. She likes that. After 18 years, she seemed to have no interest in getting promoted to be a store manager either. She welcomes feeling like a normal cog in the wheel. 

When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual. 

Keiko proposed a co-living arrangement to fellow worker Shiraha, who sounds like some giant loser of sorts. They do not have a relationship or a friendship. Living together posed a different set of problems. She had to feed him, and she considers this as 'adopting' him. This was purely an arrangement of convenience. But it wasn't convenient to anyone. Their families wished to see them get married. 

Keiko quit her job at the convenience store to apply for a better-paying regular corporate job. She felt miserable. She rejected having to live according to society and family's expectations. She decided that she would return to it. She broke the agreement with Shiraha too. Her one ambition in life is to be an excellent employee at the konbini. Those are bright and predictable aisles. She had pride in her job, and seemed to be able to do it well. To be honest, she was the best corporate asset as a tool, as a devoted worker. 

I don't know how far you want to read into capitalism and exploitation here. There's a illusion of choice. Yet, she is totally bound up in it, comfortable in it. She surrenders her humanity to a konbini.

I was wasting time talking like this. I had to get myself back in shape for the sake of the store. I had to restructure my body so it would be able to move more swiftly and precisely to replenish the refrigerated drinks or clean the floor, to more perfectly comply with the store's demands. 

Contemporary Co-Living Arrangements

This is not a genre I'm keen on reading. However, with all the hype, I decided to have a quick browse. This is 'Two Women Living Together' (first published in Korean in 2019) by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo. This is translated into English by Gene Png and published in January 2026. 

It's a memoir, about the lives of two single unmarried women in their 40s living together. These are real people. They had a career in advertising and magazines. They're writers, editors and hosts of podcasts. They are friends who got to know each other as adults, and on Twitter. They were both born in Busan and separately, went to work and live in Seoul.

As a practical arrangement, the two women pooled resources to buy a home. They chose to live with each other. They are friends, not partners or in a romantic relationship. They have common interests and passions, and also share similar outlook on life and the philosophies of living. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)

49 chatty essays invited readers into the life Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo share with four cats — Haku, Tigger, Goro and Youngbai. You hear from both women, and you get to know them a little more. Sure, there's something to be said about chosen companionship, creating a life together in a home when you're not romantically or sexually involved, but closer than roommates. I suppose we could call it a platonic partnership then. They still form a family unit, albeit not a traditional model that society understands. 

The more I think about it, the more I realize how good Sunwoo and I have got it. If each of us were to get married, would we be this comfortable with our husbands' families? I feel like sons-in-law are always treated well while daughters-in-law are expected to treat other people well. In fact, Sunwoo and I enjoy a much more comfortable status than a son-in-law - as 'the friend our daughter lives with', we are free to accept kindness and hospitality without feeling obliged to the other's parents. I can savour Sunwoo's mother's delicious yeolmukimchi without worrying about planning a filial piety trip or whether I should buy her a new home appliance to show my thanks. All I have to do is say, 'Tell your mum the food was great!' Sunwoo and I adore each other's parents. We're always happy to see them and are always thankful for their kindness. And that's probably because our relationship doesn't come with strings attached. Thanking our own parents, though — that's self-service. 

This is a glimpse into Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo's slice of life. Readers see how they reconcile household chores, and other responsibilities that come with being a home-owner, a pet-owner and as rather grown women. They had to navigate finances, and also support each other through career changes and personal loss. They have also built rapport and a community with their neighbors in the estate. 

At the end, they wrote a little about now, five years later from 2019, the year the book was released. The women are still living together now. They have lost Goro, Haku is on meds for her kidneys. They have paid off their mortgage on the apartment. They're co-hosting a podcast on Spotify, Apple and Podbang. Yeah, it's in Korean, and obviously I don't bother since I don't understand the language, and ermmm have no interest in acquiring any sort of proficiency in it.

This book and what it revealed about cohabitating with a platonic partner created a stir in the staid and stodgy Korean society. The memoir resonated with a generation of Korean women defining their own paths. This type of co-living arrangements in platonic and romantic LGBTQIA relationships challenges the patriarchal and chauvinistic familial structures in South Korea. 

I grinned. This can be quite the norm in Singapore nowadays. It is an extremely practical arrangement when we have many elderly who live alone. Well, some are cranky and prefer to live alone. But many would like some company, if they can figure out how to live amiably together, sharing chores and not shirking and basically not being a moron. Remember the ma-jie (媽姐) of the olden days? Many of them band together to live in a flat together, as bonded sisters who never married, looking after each other till death comes. We need to be able to freely talk more about chosen family and the evolving definition of partnership. 

I was right. I didn't like it. Try as I might, I couldn't get into it. I recognize that this book holds great themes and ideals. It's a pretty good read, but it's not my cup of tea. I do push for the ideals it represents. We must be able to celebrate different kinds of life when they've been built on friendship, trust, mutual respect, and a solid moral compass — a kind of life and living arrangement that might not require a romantic partner or the structure of a traditional marriage, and still equally fulfilling. 

Of A Psychotic Killer Revealed Through Strange Pictures

I got to the third book 'Strange Pictures'「変な絵」by anonymous author and Youtuber Uketsu (雨穴). This was first published in Japanese in 2022, and translated to English by Jim Rion in 2025.

The 168-page novella is made up of three interconnected short stories dug out by members of the university's Paranormal Club interpreting nine childlike drawings which led to chilling stories and murders. University students Kurihara and Shuhei Sasaki investigated the stories. 

We begin the story and sees a publicly accessible blog written by someone named Haruto, whose online pseudonym was Raku, who journaled about his wife Yuki's pregnancy and health. He posted five drawings made by a pregnant Yuki who drew them before she died in childbirth. These drawings are seemingly about her feelings of having a child.

Then the second story 'The Smudged Room' talks about a kid named Yuta Konno. We slowly realized that this is the Yuta, son of Yuki and Haruto. We learnt that he lived with his grandmother Naomi Konno, whom many thought was his mother instead. The grandmother had also wanted Yuta to call her 'mama' instead of 'grandma'. At this point, nothing seemed too weird yet. We hadn't assumed that Naomi was not quite right. Yuta somehow learnt that he has this Naomi whom he called 'mama', and he had a birth  'Mommy' who was beneath a gravestone. 

The drawing that Yuta Konno drew.

We were brought to an earlier time frame in the third story 'The Art Teacher's Final Drawing'. This story dug into the death of an art teacher Yoshiharu Miura. It had been seemingly solved with the apparent suicide and confession note signed by said murderer, and the police had closed the case. But two freelance investigative journalists thought otherwise. 

These investigative journalists young Shunseke Iwata and the older Isamu Kumai wanted to solve the mystery of Miura' death. Years later, and they were still obssessed about it. The clue was in the drawing that Miura did before he died. It hinted that he was alive in the morning, and not dead at 5pm as the police found. 

When Iwata realized that Miura was killed and battered to mask up the time of his death, he knew that the murderer was Miura's wife, Naomi. Before he could unmask her, he was killed too. Another suspect who was Miura's friend, Nobuo Toyokawa, whom the police pinned Miura's death on based on his 'suicide note', was in reality killed by Naomi as well. 

By now, we know that Naomi has a dark past and is a killer who would not hesitate to kill again. We wondered how it was possible that she hadn't been discovered. 

The last chapter wrapped up the murders. 'The Final Chapter: The Bird, Safe in the Tree' revealed the chilling link. Naomi Konno, is Yuki's psychotic mother-in-law. Naomi, at eleven years old, after her father died, and she realized that her mother didn't love her. Her mother wanted to kill her pet bird, so she killed her mother, and spent the next six years in a juvenile reformatory. 

She then married Miura and had Haruto. Their son wasn't an easy child, and Miura was strict with him and has taken to hitting him. Naomi didn't like that one bit. She didn't confess about her past, and knew she would lose her son in a divorce. So she made the decision to kill her husband.

Haruto ended up dating Yuki Kameido, his father's ex-student. She was older, but it was no barrier to their relationship. This was the same Yuki Kameido who confessed that she loved Naomi's deceased husband Miura. They married, and Yuki was pregnant. 

Naomi is twisted and possessive, and she wished to raise Yuki's son Yuta as her own. She had given Yuki salt pills, which elevated her blood pressure during childbirth, and she died. This wasn't Naomi's first kill. She has had a string of murders to her name, except that she hasn't been arrested. But Yuki somehow knew. "She had seen the murder lurking in Naomi's heart." Yuki was an illustrator. She couldn't believe that Naomi would do this. She wasn't actually sure that she would die in childbirth from the salt pills that Naomi gave her. Whatever it was, she decided to leave behind clues to her eventual death, in the form of these illustrations. 

Little Yuta's father, Haruto, who is Naomi's own son didn't know what his mother was capable of, until three years later after her death. He had taken a closer look at Yuki's illustrations. And sadly, Haruto was driven to suicide by this knowledge. He had posted Yuki's drawings on his blog using his pseudonym Raku. He couldn't escape the control of his mother. He was horrified that she killed his wife, but his loved his mother still. He couldn't live with himself or her, so he chose death as a solution. 

As the university students dug through the mysterious blogs and murders, Isamu Kumai also was relentlessly hunting down Naomi, and staged an incident, and led the police to arrest her. In that process, he also got stabbed. But he recovered, and would adopt Yuta to care for him. 

We see snippets of Naomi's time in juvenile reformatory and her drawings with the psychologist. While the psychologist cleared her mental state of mind, and thought midwifery would be a suitable career for someone like her with a protective instinct, she had neglected to factor in just how protective Naomi will be. And this instinct will always win, and she would never stop killing if she feels that Haruto or her way of life is threatened. 

This book is absolutely intriguing to read. I love it. I had no affinity to any character. I simply enjoyed the storytelling. Humans are the real monsters, mostly. The occult and the supernatural are nothing to be feared compared to the evils humans can do. 

The girl/woman who will always keep her thorns.

Of Cults & Sins

This is 'Strange Buildings' 「変な家 2」by anonymous author and Youtuber Uketsu (雨穴). This was first published in Japanese in 2023, translated to English by Jim Rion and published in March 2026. This is meant as a follow-up to 'Strange Houses' (2021).   

The language is very elementary. I don't know if it's intentional. In the translated English, it keeps reminding me that it's written in very basic terms. And even in its original Japanese. I think this is very much... ... a Y.A mystery story.

The author shares 11 files and floor plans with his draughtsmen friend Kurihara. These files are presented as a short story to us, all 11 of them, but they don't stand alone — they're inter-linked. They're not presented chronologically, so if the readers are trying to solve a mystery wth all the clues, it can be a bit mind-boggling. 

The 11 stories/houses that hold dark secrets or experience terrible tragedies all led to a grand plan. Adultery, affairs, heartbreak, house fires, child abuse, murder, children born out of wedlock, child prostitution, etc. The houseowners or one of them would be a follower of a Rebirth cult that died eventually out. 

In its heyday, the Rebirth cult preached redemption for people who have sinned and borne children out of sins. You can't join if you don't have children. These people then joined the Rebirth Congregation, and start new families and build new homes. But guilt is carried forever, and made worse if the parents can't share their burdens with anyone. The Rebirth Congregation exploits that particular guilt to brainwash its members. 

The files link back to big construction companies in Japan that build houses cheaply and terribly. At the center of this is the Hikura Homes which builds houses with design flaws and dark intent stemming from the Rebirth cult's tenets. And they built houses into Halls of Rebirth, with secret rooms and weird corners. All these were done for business profits and for Hikura Homes to stay afloat while it was mired in financial troubles. 

Then we have Hikura Homes's young master Masahiko who at twenty years old, was into Yaeko's eleven-year-old daughter. Well, enough to take her away from the okito, pay off her debt, and openly married her when she came of age. And Masahiko set up his young wife's mother Yaeko to be the cult's emblem as 'Holy Mother'. However, it was really Yaeko's daughter who nursed a grudge against her mother for forcing her into prostitution. And that was how the Rebirth cult was founded. As a revenge tactic against Yaeko, and for Hikura Homes to turn its fortunes. 

The cult was born of nefarious habits of the rich and the wealthy, and the downtrodden, of debts, paedophilia, power and control. Humans are truly the monsters. I like it that the digital copy holds floor plans for each file, and a layout of how the entire thing is presented. Otherwise it's a tad hard to imagine a house that is like the Holy Mother's body that is missing a left arm and a right leg.

The story ended on a note of redemption for the grand-daughter of Yaeko — Mitsuko Hikura. She had broken off contact and all ties with her family — the monster of her mother and her father who has a history of paedophilia. She had chosen to work as a carer in a small elderly care home on the outskirts of town. She sought atonement for her sins, and for being manipulated to eventually kill Yaeko. 

Twisted Humans, A Family Curse & Strange Houses

I decided to embark on this 'Strange' series by anonymous author and Youtuber Uketsu (雨穴). There are three books, not exactly connected to each other. There's a fourth 'Strange Maps' (October 2025) that should have its English release coming out in 2027 Q1.

I began with 'Strange Houses' 「変な家 1」. This was first published in Japanese in 2021, and was translated to English by Jim Rion and released in 2025. It's a short novella at 144 pages. 

I took a look at Uketsu's youtube channel, and gave up after 15 minutes. I'm not a very podcast or video person. I'd rather read the book, which is a summary of the whole concept. It's also much faster. 

This book isn't very imaginative in terms of a plot twists or developments. Any reader who fancies herself an amateur detective and is into solving mysteries would know what comes next. But as far as the stories go, they're fairly Japanese in terms of phenomenon unique to the country. It's not complicated, but the intriguing draw of oddly built houses and their dark history is truly irresistible. 

From the first strange perfect house with an odd dead space between the walls and windowless child's rooms, the journalist-mystery-author and his architect and draughtsman friend Kurihara investigated a few other strange houses. They have windowless rooms, bizzare hallways and trap doors. They hint at a dark history of the family who have commissioned these houses, including locking a child in a windowless room and hid its existence completely. 

In four chapters and an afterword, the book utilized floorplans to illustrate the discussions and outline how they solved each mystery. The first chapter had me doubling up in laughter — A house that is intended to hide the murderous intent of its occupants, including using their child to kill. Then the discovery of a second house with a similar floor plans followed, and a third.

The author and Kurihara went to the houses as well. The first known house in Saitama built in 2016 and was burnt down within 2 years, and the next one in Tokyo built in 2018. The timelines matched a story that Yuzuki Katabuchi talked about. Yuzuki had approached them in order to find out what happened to her sister Ayano. They also realized that Yuzuki's grandparents' home followed a similar layout, with a hidden room behind the altar.

Through their investigation of neighboring houses and the neighbors, they found out that the houses were owned by a family named Katabuchi. Keita and Ayano had young toddler named Hiroto who was about 1.5 years old, and another child about ten years old who might not have been registered or their biological child. 

It all unfolded from there. The Katabuchi family was old, and traditional and burdened with a family curse known as the 'Offering of the Left Hand'. A branch of the family splintered off from the main branch, and became more successful. The entire 'Offering of the Left Hand' nonsense was started by a family feud, incest, a fake mystic, a missing left hand in children born of incest, genetics, child murderers, and pure stupidity that lasted for generations.

We have Yuzuki Katabuchi's sister, Ayano Katabuchi who lived in that house in Saitama. Ayano was the designated successor.  taken from her original family at 12 years old. She vanished, and only resurfaced eleven years later, when she was in her early twenties. Ayano Katabuchi was married to a man named Keita. He took her name when they married. And their child was named Hiroto. Ayano and Keita were in love, and tried very hard to resist what the Katabuchi family asked for them. They didn't want to kill anyone, and they didn't want a child to kill anyone. 

In the end, Ayano's husband Keita killed everyone dedicated to the lifting the family curse in order to protect her and their child, and Momoya. Keita went on the run, and nobody knew where he went. Yuzuki and Ayano's mother Yoshie, isn't innocent either. She might have been a snitch, and was working with her ex-husband's family. This was a total family drama and tragedy stemmed from ignorance and superstitions. Humans are truly evil when they are petty, jealous and competitive. 

What Do Childhood Memories Hold?

'Constellation' by Andrea Bajani, is drawn from the author's 2025 novel 'L’anniversario' (The Anniversary) originally published in Italian. It’s told from the perspective of a man who, ten years after cutting off his parents, reflects on their lives and on his upbringing. 

The book has been translated from Italian to English by Geoffrey Brock and will be published in end August. This translated excerpt titled 'Constellation' is published in The New Yorker on June 7, 2026.

The narrator remembered his childhood, the violence in the family, propagated by his high-school drop-out father, and silent suffered by his college-educated mother. Police were called by his neighbors, but no charges were ever pressed. There were only the mess after to clean up, and pained silences in the home. 

The readers aren't privy to the plausible reasons behind the household violence. Is it a sense of inferiority that stemmed from their teenaged years? A reason to marry when the relationship wasn't balanced? A misplaced ideal of love? I don't know how much their respective families and childhood contributed to the young adults they eventually became, or had any hand in making them choose a partner so different from the families they were raised in. 

To the readers, it seemed like a relationship doomed to fail. The narrator's parents are so different as youths. And his father is such a chauvinist. We don't know if the mother is a pushover, but she seems to have accepted her fate and her role in life with this family and her chosen spouse. 

“This is a book for your mother” was my father’s way of declaring that a novel wasn’t any good. The phrase did contain a kind of affection, the perverse, frank, aggressive kind that follows, or underlines, an assertion of control. To admit such a book to our home library—which he, an eager autodidact, had gradually built over the years—was a concession he made to her. But labelling a book as “for your mother” meant, above all, that its proper place was in the bin.

I don’t remember where all these supposedly second-rate novels came from, the ones that ended up on my mother’s nightstand. I know some were gifts from my father himself, birthday or Christmas presents wrapped in bookstore paper. She’d unwrap them and say thank you. Eventually, even she began to say “these are books for me,” as if seeing herself through his eyes—holding on, through self-deprecation, only to the part of the phrase that passed for affection.

The marriage of the narrator's parents and the birth of the children locked in the mother's fate. She never worked as the teacher she had once hoped to be, with her college diploma. The father, without a high school diploma, got a sales job at a luggage shop, and became the breadwinner of the family. 

The narrator remembered this upbringing and many violent incidents, the emotional blackmail and powerplay. I get that he doesn't like it, and chose to leave and distanced himself from them after gradauting from college. I don't know where the story leads. I guess that would have to wait for the full novel to be released in two months. I'm not sure I would want to know. If I chance upon it the novel, I'll read it.

For my mother, though, it also marks an end. Or at least the closing of a life path that a college diploma might have cleared the way for. Had she become a teacher, that ceremony might have been unbearable for my father. But it was perfectly bearable now that she would merely be a mother, a wife at home, cooking and minding the children, with little interest in anything else—least of all in books or in literature, which from that point on he claimed for himself. Her role also provided him with an identity that had been culturally and socially sanctioned for centuries: he would be the husband-father who sacrificed everything out of duty to his family. That was the identity to which he now dedicated himself, and my mother accepted it because being a mother was still, after all, something. And we kids accepted it, too: our mother cooked, did crossword puzzles, and drowsed on the couch while our father read.

Is who we are now affected by what we experienced or remembered in childhood? For me, that's a yes. It shaped who I am, and who I do not wish to be. I don't even know if some of those earlier memories are real or I meshed them up somehow from different memories. They don't matter now. 

I can't tell if I'm a better person for those childhood experiences, or worst. I certainly did not suffer. I had a great childhood, although on hindsight, I know that I shouldn't have kept quiet about certain things. I know my moral principles and fundamental values, but they might not align to what the wider society expects or adhere to the prevailing social norms. 

In an interview with the same journal, the author is asked if the narrator is trustworthy. He explained,

The story is framed as one that the narrator himself is writing, and throughout it, he intimates that he’s not being entirely faithful to fact: “It’s just a retrospective wish, another invention.” Why does he go to pains to qualify his memories? And should we trust his narrative more or less as a result?

One thing that has always fascinated me is the coexistence of two beliefs: that our personality—what makes us who we are—is formed in the earliest years of life, and that we retain hardly any memory of what happened to us in those years. It suggests that we remain a mystery to ourselves throughout our lives. I like to think that art is the little probe we send to look around in the black box, though always with the knowledge that what it reveals may be pure invention. The narrator is caught up in a process of rewriting every story he has inherited, including the version of himself that he has invented over the years. Uncertainty is his territory, and it is also the territory of his painful but necessary rebirth.