Goodbye Tsugumi

By Banana Yoshimoto

Banana Yoshimoto’s novels of young life in Japan have made her an international sensation. Goodbye Tsugumi, called a witty, perceptive novel” by Elle, is an offbeat story of a deep and complicated friendship between two female cousins that ranks among her best work. Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled, and occasionally cruel. Now Maria’s father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a normal” family. When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi’s inner strength and the real possibility of losing her. Goodbye Tsugumi is a beguiling, resonant novel from one of the world’s finest young writers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780802190451

Reviews for Goodbye Tsugumi

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Underwhelming

[buecherhexe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hilariously funny!

[leahdawn_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My least favorite of Banana Yoshimoto's books. Try Lizard or Kitchen, both are excellent.

[babemuffin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An amazing book full of such beautiful descriptions of nature (the beach, the city, the sun, etc) and feelings. It speaks of transitions of life and it resounds so deeply within me and I feel like shouting yes, that was exactly how I felt each time there has been a change in my life. Absolutely well written. As well the above, it is also about life (as opposed to death) and one's will to live and what to make of that life. How life changing a brush with death could be.

[mattviews · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Goodbye Tsugumi, originally published in Japanese under the title Tsugumi in 1989, is a charming novelette about bratty girl Tsugumi who lives in a seaside town. Maria Shirakawa, Tsugumi's cousin, is the narrator. She reminisces her childhood when she and her mother lived in Yamamoto Inn owned by her aunt and uncle. Maria was the daughter of an unmarried woman (it was considered a shame to the name of a family in Asian culture). Maria grew up with her two cousins Tsugumi and Yoko. Through a prank Tsugumi played on her, Maria became very close to her cruel and foul-mouthed cousin, to whom everyone in the family spoiled and relented due to some unknown illness that could take her life at any moment.The actual story begins when Maria, who attends university in Tokyo, goes back to visit the seaside town in note of the last summer of the inn before its imminent closure. Through Maria's eyes and reminiscence we see a different Tsugumi, someone who if not in a fits of spleen and cruelty can love and embrace those around her. A dogfight on the embankment chances Tsugumi's encounter with Kyoichi, son of a hotel owner. Together they weave a bittersweet and ephemeral love tale. It is through her capacity of love and the blessing of the relationship that keep Tsugumi alive though she lapses into illness occasionally."On rainy days like this both the past and future dissolve quietly into the air and hover there.""Nighttime turns people into friends in next to no time."Yoshimoto's prose is subtle, fine-tuned, and beguiling. She shrewdly employs beautiful skeins of words that evoke the peaceful, charming, and yet melancholy atmosphere for her backdrop. Yoshimoto achieves a fine balance between a carefully etched, seemingly unlikable character to which readers will have sympathy and like. Not until the end would the readers fully appreciate the impact Tsugumi has made and the mark she has left in Maria and others' lives.Maybe it's the cultural difference or language barrier, the English translation, however excellent and thorough, inevitably (as is usual case for translated literature) loses some vernacular essence and connotation. This subtlety, however, should not undermine the pleasant reading experience Yoshimoto has to offer.

[cbjames_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tsugumi lives with her parents and older sister in the seaside inn that her parents own. She is frail, though at times it's difficult to remember just how frail. Because they are so concerned for her poor health, her parents and sister indulge her every whim as they have since her birth. Tsugumi has mixed feelings about this; she berates her family at every opportunity which makes her seem like a spoiled brat. Spoiled brat she is, some might even call her worse, but only her cousin Maria, the books narrator, ever calls her on her behavior. After one particularly hurtful remark, Maria slaps Tsugumi so hard that she falls down. Tsugumi instantly sees that Maria will treat her how she wants to be treated, not put up with her nonsense, and the two cousins become fast friends. Shortly into the novel Maria's family moves to Tokyo where she starts university. Maria is obsessed with her cousin and with the life she left at the seaside inn which will soon be sold to make way for a large hotel complex. She decides to spend one last summer at the inn with her cousins. That summer and the adventures the girls have make up the bulk of the novel. There is a romance with a rich boy, there are two puppies, there is a criminal plot, a picnic on the beach, a near death experience and finally the goodbyes. Just what one would expect in a summer-love type story. The three cousins become even closer friends, just as they are about to drift apart into adulthood. The character of Tsugumi is what separates this novel from its more pedestrian relations. When one of the dogs is kidnapped by local thugs, she is the one who becomes obsessed with not just getting the dog back but with getting revenge. She hatches a complicated plot that the others think goes too far and I thought was hard to believe such a frail person could pull off. (I won't give it away here but it involves a lot of digging, more than I could probably do and I would not describe myself as frail.) Tsugumi remains an unpleasant young woman throughout the novel, though she is the one who has the romance with the rich boy, and it's not exactly clear if she has learned her lesson by the end. In a more typical summer at the seaside story Tsugumi probably would have been the villain instead of one of the three friends. There is plenty in Goodbye Tsugumi for readers looking to find out what life in modern Japan is like. The characters are not exotic, so we get to see what life is like for everyday folk in Japan. It was interesting, for example, to see how difficult it can be to end a marriage. Maria's father faced a difficult period trying to get a divorce from his wife so he could be with Maria and her mother. Along with a look into two different Japanese families we get a look into Japanese schools and universities. I found the details here to be interesting without getting in the way of the story. In Goodbye Tsugumi the reader can pick up quite a lot about Japan without realizing it. (I am trusting that Ms. Yoshimoto's depiction of Japan is an honest one.)But in the end, it all must come back to the unpleasant young woman Tsugumi. Frankly, I just didn't really like her much. It was difficult for me to see what Maria saw in her. I understand the blood ties of family relationships, but once she'd moved to Tokyo with her family I thought she should have said goodbye to Tsugumi. So, in the end, I'm giving Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto three out of five stars.

[davidroche_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When you've read every Haruki Murakami and you want more of the straightforward stuff (Norwegian Wood / South of The Border type) then this is a good place to go

[smithsj01_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a Christmas present from a friend as I'd heard about this author and was interested in trying her books. I don't know if this is a good one to have started with or not but it's a lovely story. It's about 3 girls - Tsugumi, Maria and Yoko. Tsugumi and Yoko are sisters and Maria their cousin (she is the narrator). It's about their lives, their family and growing up along with all the problems that brings. Whilst simple in style, it is an enjoyable read. Perhaps a little too slow for me in that I remained detached from the characters, always feeling like an outsider. I'd like to read her other work, in time. I don't feel I could rush out and read something else by her right now. This book will stay in my memory as a lovely little tale.

[ko2li2bri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To the question to what her favorite season was, Banana Yoshimoto replied it was summer because she loves the sea. Both the sea and summer are the settings of this story. A story about two girls, who were brought up at the peninsula Izu, Japan. Maria lives in Tokyo now but spends the summer at her aunt and uncle's guest-house in the little village by the sea. It will be her last summer together with her cousins, Tsugumi and Yoko as the guest-house is going to close its gates due to a hotel build in the village.We get to know Tsugumi, Maria's cousin, who is a girl with a strong character but a weak body. Tsugumi gets ill a lot. With every little exertion a fever puts her to bed. Tsugumi is said to die a young age. Nonetheless she behaves like a bully and makes her family feel uncomfortable with her gift of the gab and other vulgarities.First I thought Tsugumi troubles the people in her reach to make a difference in their lives, that when she is gone people won't forget her. But when I got closer to the end I changed my mind. I think her motives lay in opening the eyes of the others; trying to make it easier for them."Each one of us continues to carry the heart of each self we've ever been, at every stage along the way, and a chaos of everything good and rotten. And we have to carry this weight all alone, through each day that we live. We try to be as nice as we can to the people we love, but we alone support the weight of ourselves."Death again is a motive in this work, it's a constant thread to Tsugumi, which it seems she wants to shy away with her boldness. I think it is one of the author's messages in general: to not shy away from life even when facing death like strong Tsugumi.Yoshimoto's style is "easy-to-read" and she tends to use common language. It is refreshing and youthful. Dialogues often follow a scheme not like one character telleing something and the other inquiring further but as if characters knew each other so well, they would not need to ask for more details to give an appropriate answer.As I tend to get a lot out of Yoshimoto's works right now I lined up another book by her for a near future read already. It's going to be Lizard.

[RAHARISON Mialy Harentsoa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful pacing and beautiful descriptions. The story is easy to follow, yet the characters make it tenfold more interesting.

[acia-11 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Tsugumi is annoying and her poor sister and mother seem to live exclusively to the rhythm of her selfish moods and actions. She has a life threatening illness that we don’t find out what it is and that’s probably intentional to gather sympathy. There are beautiful passages and interesting themes in the story characteristic of Yoshimoto’s writing. The highlight of the book for me was the narrative of having people coming and going from one’s life. I wish she had explored it more.

[kmaziarz_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Maria Shirakawa has spent her childhood waiting, along with her mother, for her father to obtain a divorce from his first wife. Mother and daughter spent those years living in the seaside inn of Maria’s aunt and uncle, only seeing Maria’s father on the few occasions he was able to get away from his life in the city to visit. Maria grew up alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a young woman with a frail and sickly body but a vibrant and almost malicious spirit. Freed from common behavioral norms by the deep conviction that she could die at any moment, Tsugumi is rude, loud-mouthed, spoiled, and too clever by half. She can also be enchanting and mischievous when the mood strikes her. Maria is always torn between annoyance and admiration for her cousin, who is free to flirt with boys and concoct elaborate pranks and revenge schemes with an ease Maria—who is bound by a determination to be the perfect daughter for her distant father—can only admire and resent by turns. When Maria and her mother are finally able to join Maria’s father in the city and become a true family, she finds that she misses Tsugumi bitterly. When Maria’s aunt and uncle determine to sell the inn and move to another town, Maria heads back to spend one last summer with her infuriating and enchanting cousin.Deliberately paced, with very little emphasis on plot, Goodbye, Tsugumi is a delicate character study. Some awkwardness in sentence structure can perhaps be blamed on the translation from Japanese. For those readers who enjoy quiet, lyrical works and are willing to forego action for insight.

[squeakychu · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Banana Yoshimoto’s novels usually have sweet, wistful characters. This novel did not. Its main character was a girl by the name of Tsugumi. She was rude and nasty. She was also dying. Thin, frail, but beautiful, Tsugumi never found favor with me as she did all sorts of spiteful things to others, even to her own cousin Maria. I could never understand why Maria and all others put up with her foolishness. It was very hard not to just close this book and be rid of Tsugumi once and for all.In this story, Maria, a year older than Tsugumi, comes back to the oceanside Japanese town in which she previously lived to spend one last summer at the inn which Tsugumi’s parents run. Maria, for some odd reason, actually enjoys the company of Tsugumi. Maria also spends time in the company of Yoko, Tsugumi’s older sister, and Kyoichi, Tsugumi’s boy-friend. Not much happens in this story other than the kidnapping of a dog. Yes, I think that’s the highlight of this story.There’s another lowlight, but I’ll leave that for you to discover should you decide to read this book. What happened was truly not believable so I was rather glad to finish this book and move on to something else.