Yōko Ogawa: 余白の愛 [Love at the Margin]

The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s 余白の愛 [Love at the Margin]. Our unnamed heroine/narrator has suddenly had serious hearing problems . We learn later that her husband had left her the day before. From her room in the F clinic, she can see an old hotel and, two later, she will be there, attending a session organised by a health magazine on the issue of hearing problems. Here she sees Y, the stenographer. After the event she is again hospitalised. She is visited by her husband, who promises to support her financially and, later, Y, nominally to check the proofs of the session in the hotel. However, she and Y become close as she remains obsessed with his long fingers. However it soon becomes clear that there is something mysterious about Y. Who is he really? And the museum where she saw Beethoven’s ear trumpet when she was thirteen and now, by chance, finds again, what is it really and what happened to the boy with whom she went to the museum? But, as often is the case with Ogawa, this book is about memory. she is lost in the meanders of her memory. This was Ogawa’s first full-length work, sadly not available in English.