Description

The Shining Sea by Koji Suzuki

Hardcover – Kodansha – Jul 2022 – 251 pages

A seemingly amnesiac woman sits mutely before her psychiatrist. Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to speak, the only time she shows any hint of emotion is when she hums a song—and the song becomes the first clue.

Pregnant but abandoned by her lover, who boarded a tuna boat to brave turbulent waters far from home, she’d waded into the pitch-black waves one evening to drown herself…because when you feel like you’re stranded at sea all by yourself in the dead of the night, those waves call for you, lulling you to sink into the silence beneath.

What we go on to discover is a cursed fate, a ruthless reality, and the dark humor of a world ruled by the indifferent forces of chance. They say you never know what the future holds, but what if you’re told that you only have precisely a fifty-fifty chance of attaining happiness?