Suggested in the Stars

(by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani)

I liked this book, which is the second in a trilogy that started with Scattered All Over the Earth, just as much as I liked the first one—which is to say, quite a bit. This one, like the first one, is made up of chapters that are first-person narration by different characters—three of whom work at a hospital, one of whom is a patient at that hospital, and five of whom make their way to the hospital over the course of their book to see the patient, Susanoo, who may or may not have aphasia. Hiruko wants to speak to Susanoo in their native language (Japanese), because in the world of this book Japan has (maybe) disappeared, and Hiruko, who’s been studying in Scandinavia, wants to connect with someone from her homeland. Nanook, Nora, Knut, and Akash are all along for the ride for various reasons, some of which are academic (Knut is very interested in languages) and others of which are personal (Akash has a thing for Knut; Nora has a thing for Nanook). At the hospital, we get chapters from the perspectives of a doctor, a nurse, and a kid who washes dishes in the basement.

But that all makes this book sound much more straightforward than it is: it’s concerned with identity and story and myth, in how the world sees people and how people see themselves. There’s a moment where Akash jokes about how, because Akash is Indian, Europeans assume that Akash knows yoga. Akash plays along and says “my imitation is starting to look like the real thing.” Knut wonders if that would work for him too—somehow people have gotten the impression that he’s working on a book and starting a company to publish it: “maybe if I played the role of a young Scandinavian about the set up a publishing company,” he ponders, he would be that person. There’s a whole subplot about the contrasting personalities of Nanook and Dr. Velmer, and the question of whether people are who/what they seem to be comes up in various ways over the course of the book.

I suspect someone who knows more about Japanese myth than I do might really enjoy the mythical aspects of the story, which I appreciated even though I wasn’t previously familiar with the mythological figures referenced. At one point, Hiruko says she’s the sun goddess and wonders if Susanoo is the moon, though I think the novel also suggests that Munun, the dishwasher, is the moon, and Susanoo is a Shinto god associated with storms. There are also references to the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi, but I don’t know that we’re meant to see the characters as definitively tied to one mythical figure or another—it feels like a sense of overlap and multiplicity is part of the point.