See Loss See Also Love
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
*Named a Best Book of Spring 2024 by Oprah Daily and a Most Anticipated Book by The Millions and PureWow*
A tender, slyly comical, and shamelessly honest debut novel following a Japanese widow raising her son between worlds with the help of her Jewish mother-in-law as she wrestles with grief, loss, and—strangest of all—joy.
Shortly after her husband Levi’s untimely death, Kyoko decides to raise their young son, Alex, in San Francisco, rather than return to Japan. Her nosy yet loving Jewish mother-in-law, Bubbe, encourages her to find new love and abandon frugality but her own mother wants Kyoko to celebrate her now husbandless life. Always beside her is Alex, who lives confidently, no matter the circumstance.
Four sections of vignettes reflect Kyoko’s fluctuating emotional states—sometimes ugly, other times funny, but always uniquely hers. While freshly mourning Levi, Kyoko and Alex confront another death—that of Alex’s pet betta fish. Kyoko and Bubbe take a road trip to a psychic and discover that Kyoko carries bad karma. On visits back to Japan, Kyoko and her mother clash over how best to connect Alex with his Japanese heritage, and as Alex enters his teenage years and brings his first girlfriend home, Kyoko lets her imagination run wild as she worries about teen pregnancy.
In this openhearted and surprising novel about the choices and relationships that sustain us, there are times where Kyoko is lonely but never alone and others in which she is alone but never lonely. Through these moments, she learns how much more there is to herself in the wake of total and unexpected upheaval. See: Loss. See Also: Love. is a testament to how grief isn’t a linear process but is a spiraling awareness of the vast range of human emotion we experience every day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this wry debut from Tominaga, a Japanese woman navigates single parenthood after her American husband's untimely death. Kyoko is visiting her parents in Japan with her 18-month-old son, Alex, when her husband, Levi, is crushed to death in their San Francisco garage by the antique car he was working on. Kyoko had stopped working after Alex was born, and she struggles to see how she'll afford her life in San Francisco. She cuts down on her costs, finds work at a preschool, and receives emotional support from her blunt and loving mother-in-law, Bubbe. The women's relationship forms the heart of the episodic narrative, which includes a visit to a psychic who claims Levi wasn't happy with Kyoko. At one point, Kyoko suppresses the urge to tell Bubbe how little she misses Levi, thinking, "The greatest gift he gave me was the opportunity to raise Alex alone"; at another, Bubbe affectionately calls Kyoko her daughter, not her daughter-in-law. Tominaga depicts the women's tensions, misunderstandings, and affection with refreshing honesty and piercing insights ("Regret, resentment, and shame would build a wall around you, believed, and by telling the truth we would break the wall and unite"). Tominga impresses with this distinctive slice of life.