Description: It's been a year since Yuki Hirano left home--or more precisely, was booted from it--to study forestry in the remote mountain village of Kamusari. Being a woodsman is not the future he imagined, but his name means "courage," and Yuki hopes to live up to it. He's adapting to his job and learning constantly. In between, he records local legends--tales pulsing with life, passion, and wondrous gods. Kamusari has other charms as well. One of them is Nao. Yuki's crush on the only other young single person in the village isn't a secret. Yet how impressed can she be with someone at least five years younger who makes less money and doesn't even own a car? More daunting, she's in love with another man. Finally finding his place among the villagers, a feeling deepened by his crush, Yuki seems headed for a dream life of adventure and camaraderie--and Nao could be the missing piece of that dream
Brief description:
Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor emerita of Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts. Her first translated novel, Secret Rendezvous by Kobo Abe, received the 1980 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. In 2014, her translation of A True Novel by Minae Mizumura received the same award. Besides Shion Miura's The Great Passage and two-volume Forest series, Carpenter's recent translations include Mizumura's An I-Novel, Keiichiro Hirano's At the End of the Matinee, and Tōru Haga's Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603-1853. Her forthcoming translations include Masatsugu Ono's At the Edge of the Wood and Kiyoko Murata's A Woman of Pleasure. Carpenter lives on Whidbey Island in Washington State.
Review Quotes:
Praise for The Easy Life in Kamusari
"Fans of all ages should enjoy the author's blend of the traditional and the contemporary...In a battle of Japanese settings, wondrous mountains win big over bustling cities." --Kirkus Reviews
Praise for The Great Passage
Winner of an Earphones Award, Fiction
"Mastery of words may not result in masterly communication, and a great dictionary, like a love story, is 'the result of people puzzling over their choices'--a classic tension that has made The Great Passage a prizewinner in Japan, as well as both a successful feature film and an animated television series." --The New York Times
"Swirling with witty enchantment, The Great Passage proves to be, well, utterly great. Readers should be advised to get ready to sigh with delighted satisfaction and awe-inspiring admiration." --Booklist (starred review)
"The Great Passage has a philosophy of thoughtfulness and dedication to words that any reader will understand...Miura's prose--and Carpenter's translation--glides along, smooth and precise, with flashes of quiet poetry." --Metropolis
"The Great Passage is interwoven with romantic love stories, but ultimately it is the passion of the characters, their friendship, and their devotion to their task that direct and complete the narrative and turn it from simply a good book to a great one." --Talia Franks, Three Percent