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A review by bgg616
The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita
5.0
This is the kind of contemporary fiction that I love. Spare prose, deeply reflective, and about ordinary people leading ordinary lives. Tomoru is a 20-something year old man who has trained as a piano tuner. Coming from a poor village in the mountains of Hokkaido, the large island north of Japan's largest island, Honshu, where Tokyo is located. In the mountains, Tomoru led a solitary life with his parents and brother. The forest was his refuge. He was very fortunate to discover in his teenage years a career he would love. He saw a piano tuner at work in his school, and approached the man to ask to be his apprentice. He was advised to go to a school for piano tuners and when he completed his studies, he was taken on at the company where the piano tuner he admired, worked.
This simple story tells of Tomoru's work to master a craft and find a place for himself in this world. I do not play piano, nor do I listen to a lot of piano music. But Tomoru's observations and meditations on this world were captivating. I loved his comparisons of the sounds of the concert hall and the forest of his home. This young man, from a simple background, who grew up in isolation from the larger world, show profound depths in his meditations on work and life. It is a moving novel that I recommend highly.
This simple story tells of Tomoru's work to master a craft and find a place for himself in this world. I do not play piano, nor do I listen to a lot of piano music. But Tomoru's observations and meditations on this world were captivating. I loved his comparisons of the sounds of the concert hall and the forest of his home. This young man, from a simple background, who grew up in isolation from the larger world, show profound depths in his meditations on work and life. It is a moving novel that I recommend highly.