Beauty and Sadness
Ratings12
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings12
Average rating3.6
The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover. This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.
Reviews with the most likes.
Beauty and the creep
old man destroys a young girl
gets rich from the book.
You'll be bothered by each masterfully painted character's passivity in the face of suffering they cause and experience. Oki's sexual assault of child mistress Otoko, wife Fumiko's jealous acceptance of his infidelity and Otoko's teenage pregnancy and suicide attempt will leave you surprised by the near-absence of emotional wounds that such injuries have on their adult lives until you realise traumatic memories will find an outlet (in this case through Keiko); even if you have repressed it in one generation, it will find its expression in the next. This book reminds me so much of my own family dynamics, it makes me realise that the reverberations of the past will always be felt but there can be both beauty and sadness in the bell's toll.
