The Premonition - Banana Yoshimoto

From the beloved, bestselling author of Kitchen, comes a deeply haunting, heartwarming exploration of loneliness and painful memories set in Japan.'Polished, concise, emotionally rewarding.' Daily Mail'Reading Banana Yoshimoto is like taking a bracing, cleansing bath.' LING MAI had a premonition of setting out on a journey and getting lost inside a distant tide ... It was the beginning of summer, and I was nineteen years old.Yayoi lives with her perfect, loving family - something 'like you'd see in a Spielberg movie'. But while her parents tell happy stories of her childhood, she is increasingly haunted by the sense that she's forgotten something important about her past.Deciding to take a break, she stays with her eccentric but beloved aunt Yukino. Living a life without order, Yukino seems to be protecting herself, but beneath this facade Yayoi starts to recover lost memories, and everything she knows about her past threatens to change forever.
Review
This delicate, precisely drawn novella packs a lot into its slender spine . . . Exquisite. ― Marie Claire, 'Best books of 2023'This polished, concise, emotionally rewarding family drama, originally written in 1988, explores how ghosts of the past determine the path to the future. ― Daily MailCasts a delicate spell . . . In a creative landscape that is increasingly homogenised by an Anglo-American style, it's refreshing to pick up literature that has not lost its thisness. The world that blossoms from Yoshimoto's text is unequivocally Japanese, in the aesthetic vein known as mono no aware, which roughly translates as 'the pathos of things' or 'a sensitivity to ephemera'. But beneath the poetics, Yoshimoto's books confront serious themes . . . The Premonition taps into anxiety about memory, childhood and the peculiar feeling that there's a hidden truth about ourselves we've forgotten, and if only we took pains to find it we might finally feel at home. ― Spectator[Yoshimoto] made me believe again that it was possible to write honestly, rigorously, morally, about the material reality of characters; to write toward human warmth as a reaffirmation of the bonds that tie us together. -- Brandon TaylorA nostalgia-inflected coming-of-age tale, The Premonition sees Yoshimoto cast a subtle shadow over cosy domesticity by unpacking a young woman's haunting childhood memories and familial secrets. ― FriezeYayoi grows up with a perfect family - but is haunted by the idea there is something about her past she has forgotten. So she decides to move in with her strange aunt, and memories begin to be unearthed. . . ― iNewsYoshimoto's writing is lucid, earnest and disarming. ― The New York TimesBanana Yoshimoto is one of our greatest writers. -- Bryan WashingtonThere is no such thing as a stock character in Yoshimoto's fiction. She writes utterly without pretence. ― The Washington PostIn Japan, Yayoi lives with her parents and brother: the perfect family picture. But flashes of a sixth sense and a feeling that her real home is elsewhere undermine her place in the world When she moves in with her lone aunt Yokino who lives life her own peculiar way, they little by little explore an unvisited past together. Aloneness and connection beautifully expressed. ― Sainsburys MagazineA master storyteller . . . The sensuality is subtle, masked, and extraordinarily powerful. ― Chicago TribuneIn Japan, Yayoi lives with her parents and brother: the perfect family picture. But flashes of a sixth sense and a feeling that her real home is elsewhere undermine her place in the world. When she moves in with her lone aunt Yokino who lives life her own peculiar way, they little by little explore an unvisited past together Aloneness and connection beautifully expressed. ― Sainsburys Magazine

About the Author
Banana Yoshimoto is the prize-winning and internationally bestselling author of Kitchen, N.P., Lizard, Amrita, Asleep and Goodbye Tsugumi. She has published ten books in English translation and her work has been translated and published in over thirty countries. She lives in Tokyo.