Jessica
Japanese Gothic deals with two different characters across timelines: Lee Turner is from the year 2026 and has fled from America and gone to his father’s home in Japan after killing his roommate. Sen is a young girl in Japan in 1877, trying to become a samurai. Both live in the same house across centuries. However, Sen and Lee find a closet door that breaches between timelines and allows them to visit and communicate with each other. Will going back and forth throughout time change Lee and Sen’s destiny?
The story of Lee and Sen is a tragic one. Both have horrible family lives. Lee’s mother disappeared when he was a child while on vacation. She is presumed to be in a sex trafficking ring or dead. Lee’s father avoids communicating fully with him, which makes Lee feel alone. To avoid the pain of this, he self-medicates in order not to feel anything. Sen’s father is abusive. He and his friends are trying to force the government to bring the way of the samurai back. However, he came back as the sole survivor. Now, Sen had her family go into hiding from the government to stay alive. Ever since Sen’s father came back, he has been abusive to Sen, her brothers, and her mother. He especially focuses on Sen, making her think all the time that she is not worthy of becoming a samurai and is a constant disappointment.
The grief the characters feel is overwhelming. Lee is constantly haunted by the fact that he couldn’t save his mom. He hears her in his dreams asking him to save her, and he feels hopeless each time that he is not able to do anything. Sen is constantly worried about pleasing her father to her own detriment. She trains to the point that she is tired. She also refuses to argue with him, even though it is against her best self-interest, like when she was asked to watch her younger sister die and to cut off her mother’s fingers.
There is also a concept of an unreliable narrator. Lee had been drugging himself for years when the story starts, and he stops cold turkey once he gets to Japan. Because of the drugs, he doesn’t remember all the details of killing his roommate or even where he hid the body. It makes you wonder if he really killed anybody or not.
There is also the aspect of the memory being reliable as well. Both Lee and Sen have situations that their mothers put them through, some things that may have been more horrifying than they realized when they analyze events from an adult point of view. It shows how children try to think of a situation as safe, because no child wants to believe that their parent would actually hurt them. However, Lee and Sen slowly realize that their mothers caused them more trauma during their childhood than they would have liked.
The story is a very gripping tale of grief and tragedy. You feel for the characters during their struggles throughout the book, and how they go about trying to prepare for their destiny. In honor of the book, I have the following questions: If you had the chance to learn about your future, would you take it?
Originally posted at jdavismallory.substack.com.
Japanese Gothic deals with two different characters across timelines: Lee Turner is from the year 2026 and has fled from America and gone to his father’s home in Japan after killing his roommate. Sen is a young girl in Japan in 1877, trying to become a samurai. Both live in the same house across centuries. However, Sen and Lee find a closet door that breaches between timelines and allows them to visit and communicate with each other. Will going back and forth throughout time change Lee and Sen’s destiny?
The story of Lee and Sen is a tragic one. Both have horrible family lives. Lee’s mother disappeared when he was a child while on vacation. She is presumed to be in a sex trafficking ring or dead. Lee’s father avoids communicating fully with him, which makes Lee feel alone. To avoid the pain of this, he self-medicates in order not to feel anything. Sen’s father is abusive. He and his friends are trying to force the government to bring the way of the samurai back. However, he came back as the sole survivor. Now, Sen had her family go into hiding from the government to stay alive. Ever since Sen’s father came back, he has been abusive to Sen, her brothers, and her mother. He especially focuses on Sen, making her think all the time that she is not worthy of becoming a samurai and is a constant disappointment.
The grief the characters feel is overwhelming. Lee is constantly haunted by the fact that he couldn’t save his mom. He hears her in his dreams asking him to save her, and he feels hopeless each time that he is not able to do anything. Sen is constantly worried about pleasing her father to her own detriment. She trains to the point that she is tired. She also refuses to argue with him, even though it is against her best self-interest, like when she was asked to watch her younger sister die and to cut off her mother’s fingers.
There is also a concept of an unreliable narrator. Lee had been drugging himself for years when the story starts, and he stops cold turkey once he gets to Japan. Because of the drugs, he doesn’t remember all the details of killing his roommate or even where he hid the body. It makes you wonder if he really killed anybody or not.
There is also the aspect of the memory being reliable as well. Both Lee and Sen have situations that their mothers put them through, some things that may have been more horrifying than they realized when they analyze events from an adult point of view. It shows how children try to think of a situation as safe, because no child wants to believe that their parent would actually hurt them. However, Lee and Sen slowly realize that their mothers caused them more trauma during their childhood than they would have liked.
The story is a very gripping tale of grief and tragedy. You feel for the characters during their struggles throughout the book, and how they go about trying to prepare for their destiny. In honor of the book, I have the following questions: If you had the chance to learn about your future, would you take it?
Originally posted at jdavismallory.substack.com.