If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story is narrated by Chihiro, who is more concerned with external events than with the machinations of her own mind. Through what she does and doesn't tell us, her inner paradoxes are revealed. She places the highest value on the timelessness of her art, but says that she doesn't paint for the future. She acknowledges her ignorance about trauma as energetically as she clings to it. Her tone is casual, self-protective, and carefree in a way that requires a great deal of thought. Just because people are playing doesn't mean their hearts aren't in it.

Nakajima operates from a compartment deep within himself, a shelter from society and memory. He "meets" Chihiro as they gaze out from their respective apartment windows. They inch closer together as months pass, a process that we witness in snapshots of the everyday: taking naps, drinking coffee, painting nails. But something hangs in the background, silent. When you compare your anticipated recovery time to the remainder of your life expectancy and can't tell which is longer, you're in a position that nobody is looking to hear about. I don't want to be part of the loneliness that these not-normal people exude.

The titular body of water is a scene of Nakajima's childhood, but it's more than that. Chihiro likens their time together to the feeling of being underwater. The end of a person's life evokes the smell of water. The story is concerned with ends achievable through water: cleansing or drowning or both. Or freezing over: forming a shell for others to skitter across, featureless and unpredictable.

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