Fog Island Mountains
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4.0 • 8 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
What if you could rewrite a tragedy? What if you could give grace to someone s greatest mistake? Huddled beneath the volcanoes of the Kirishima mountain range in southern Japan, also called the Fog Island Mountains, the inhabitants of small town Komachi are waiting for the biggest of the summer's typhoons. South African expatriate Alec Chester has lived in Komachi for nearly forty years. Alec considers himself an ordinary man, with common troubles and mundane achievements until his doctor gives him a terminal cancer diagnosis and his wife, Kanae, disappears into the gathering storm. Kanae flees from the terrifying reality of Alec's diagnosis, even going so far as to tell a childhood friend that she is already a widow. Her willful avoidance of the truth leads her to commit a grave infidelity, and only when Alec is suspected of checking himself out of the hospital to commit a quiet suicide does Kanae come home to face what it will mean to lose her husband. Narrating this story is Azami, one of Komachi's oldest and most peculiar inhabitants, the daughter of a famous storyteller with a mysterious story of her own. A haunting and beautiful reinterpretation of the Japanese kitsune folktale tradition, Fog Island Mountains is a novel about the dangers of action taken in grief and of a belief in healing through storytelling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bailat-Jones presents a delicate debut novel that is something of a poem in disguise. Indeed, her narrator, storyteller Azami Kitauchi, identifies this work as a poem in its first pages. The narrative captures a brief moment in time, the juxtaposition of the onslaught of a typhoon with the dreadful news of terminal cancer for its protagonist, South African Alec Chester. Alec has made his home in Komachi on the Japanese island of Kyushu for over 40 years, marrying a woman named Kanae and raising a family, and teaching English. In spare prose, Bailat-Jones sketches haiku-like images that combine emotion with sensations of the natural world around Alec. As the wall of the typhoon hits, Alec and Kanae are struggling to find one another. Azami's own story introduces elements of Japanese folklore, bringing contrast to the painfully real narrative of the Chesters. A true rendering of the Japanese "kitsune" folklore tradition, this is a lovely look at the strength and grace that can be found in the face of death, and the sorrow of the knowledge of passing beauty.
