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A review by nhdiary
Grave of the Fireflies by James R. Abrams, Akiyuki Nosaka
4.0
"In the morning half of the fireflies had dropped, dead, Setsuko buried their remains in the entrance of the shelter, "whatcha doin'?" "I'm making a grave for the fire-flies," her head bent downward, "mamma too is in a grave, isn't she."
Extremely raw, heart-rending, graphic. And all the more necessary. A testimony of the results of human barbarism at its finest, of the devastation unleashed by wars and the indifference of others in times of survival.
This was definitely a tough read, literally and figuratively. It took me a little longer than I had expected to read this short story, because of its severe lack of punctuation. The translator said it fairly well in his notes, "He [Akiyuki Nosaka] places periods not so much to end a sentence but to conclude a train of thought, and some of his "thoughts" run on for pages." I had to focus more intensively on each group of words to make sense of the story. But, in hindsight, I think that the author's style added a tragic component to the storytelling, similar to a narrator reminiscing about the heaviest years of his life.
It is quite distressing, as a reader, to be presented with Seita's death at the very first page. That graphic image stays with you as you watch the story slowly unfold, dreading reaching the page of the awful, yet inevitable, fate that awaits the siblings.
What makes this book twice as heartbreaking is the fact that this is a semi-autobiographical novel. Many have endured similar cruelty, and most of them did not survive to tell their story.
Extremely raw, heart-rending, graphic. And all the more necessary. A testimony of the results of human barbarism at its finest, of the devastation unleashed by wars and the indifference of others in times of survival.
This was definitely a tough read, literally and figuratively. It took me a little longer than I had expected to read this short story, because of its severe lack of punctuation. The translator said it fairly well in his notes, "He [Akiyuki Nosaka] places periods not so much to end a sentence but to conclude a train of thought, and some of his "thoughts" run on for pages." I had to focus more intensively on each group of words to make sense of the story. But, in hindsight, I think that the author's style added a tragic component to the storytelling, similar to a narrator reminiscing about the heaviest years of his life.
It is quite distressing, as a reader, to be presented with Seita's death at the very first page. That graphic image stays with you as you watch the story slowly unfold, dreading reaching the page of the awful, yet inevitable, fate that awaits the siblings.
What makes this book twice as heartbreaking is the fact that this is a semi-autobiographical novel. Many have endured similar cruelty, and most of them did not survive to tell their story.