The Pine Islands
-
-
3.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $8.99
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
Gilbert Silvester, eminent scholar of beard fashions in film, wakes up one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him. Certain the dream is a message, and unable to even look at her, he flees - immediately, irrationally, inexplicably - for Japan. In Tokyo he discovers the travel writings of the great Japanese poet Basho. Keen to cure his malaise, he decides to find solace in nature the way Basho did. Suddenly, from Gilbert's directionless crisis there emerges a purpose: a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the poet to see the moon rise over the pine islands of Matsushima. Although, of course, unlike the great poet, he will take a train. Along the way he falls into step with another pilgrim: Yosa, a young Japanese student clutching a copy of The Complete Manual of Suicide . Together, Gilbert and Yosa travel across Basho's disappearing Japan, one in search of his perfect ending and the other a new beginning. Serene, playful, and profound, The Pine Islands is a story of the transformations we seek and the ones we find along the way.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Pine Islands is as vivid and scattered as a wonderfully strange dream—so it makes perfect sense that it starts with one. Gilbert Silvester awakens from a nightmare about his wife’s infidelity with a sudden urge to travel to Japan. A low-level university professor with an unsatisfying career writing about film portrayals of men’s beards, Gilbert hops on a plane to Tokyo. His travels are quirky and unexpectedly transcendent, especially when he embarks on a quest to visit the pine-covered islands of Matsushima in order to pay homage to the classical Japanese poet Bashō. Marion Poschmann’s lyrical, almost abstract storytelling gives Gilbert’s travels a surreal logic. And she really nails her eccentric, complicated, at times positively unlikeable protagonist. This beautiful and funny novel took us to places we’ve never been.
