The Love We Share Without Knowing

I'll bet a lot of reviewers are tempted to use the words "slight" and "lovely" when reviewing this book. So I'm not going to use either. So there. Barzak creates a fragile structure based on a series of (dis)connections between expat and Japanese characters. The book muses on ghosts, suicide, blindness, loneliness, and a sadness so deep it resembles Handke's idea of a sorrow beyond dreams. It took me some pages to understand why he published this as a novel instead of a linked set of short stories. The novel context is particularly important to the reading experience, since it meant I actively looked for the connections. This makes it the first time ever the publisher hasn't annoyed me by appending "A Novel" to the book title on the cover. For once, it wasn't useless and was even a little bit helpful. If you aren't a fan of speculative fiction, please don't be put off by the label or the Nebula nomination. The Love We Share Without Knowing is probably closer to magical realism than it is classic fantasy. I would recommend it for any reader.

In this second novel by Christopher Barzak, readers will connect not only with familiar characters but with characters from far away. It is what I like to call a "global" novel, rather than one that speaks only to one country or region. It's a novel set in Japan, with characters both Japanese and American, as well as a few other nationalities. Each chapter is a story in and of itself. Some are told in the first person, almost as if the characters are sharing the secret stories of their lives with the reader, creating an amazing feeling of intimacy. Other chapters are told in the third person omniscient, in which the reader feels as if they are watching these characters on a movie screen. And other chapters are told in other ways, as in the third chapter, when it seems at first to be a monologue until you read to its end and discover that it isn't a monologue so much as an "address" from one character in the novel to another. The effect of this variation of storytelling perspectives is like a symphony, a variety of instruments or voices coming together to create something more than they could be alone, which is sort of the theme of the novel, I think. It's beautiful, and the effect it creates builds as you get farther into the book and allow the voices to mingle, as they build layers of meaning and tone. But aside from that description of the way the novel is written, what's more important is the beautiful yet sad depiction of life as we know it, in many countries, not just Japan. This a gently existential book about the stark loneliness of being surrounded by people, of trying to understand others and be understood, it's about failing, it's about the search for one's place in the world, and the always mingling worlds of things and spirits. You can't teach Barzak's approach in a creative writing workshop or MFA program. It's not the sort of writing that shows itself off, it's not about displaying his abilities so much as giving a reader a variety of ways to read, and it manages to quietly amaze without begging you to notice your own amazement. It's a book about falling in love, falling out of love, losing someone you love, and learning how to live with their absence. It's about living.

Some books are regarded as having more worth than others because of when and by whom they were written. We treat with skepticism modern writers with their non-linear reflections and questioning rather than proclaiming style and hold up anything written by dead white guys from days of yore (aka, the classics). We see biography and history regarded as more valid than fiction, and lately, and even within the fiction genre, we find multiple sub-genres: romance, realism, magical realism, sci-fi, speculative fiction, chick lit, and you get the idea. But with these simple categorizations, we miss, well, we miss a lot. Christopher Barzak, has written two novels that defy these kinds of easy genre-based descriptions. The most recent, The Love We Share Without Knowing, is particularly difficult to pin down. This is its strength. If you're looking for a typical love story: boy meets girl, is confronted with a significant obstacle to her affections, overcomes obstacle, love wins in the end, then this is not the book for you (you want something by Nicholas Sparks). Instead Barzak's novel doesn't provide us with easy or even any answers about love. We get questions in a world where the dead and living hold company together and where people drift between these two worlds in dreams and even in the guise of a fox. Love becomes dark and grasping, lonely and desperate, and it refuses to be silenced by death. And yet the darkness doesn't exist just for darkness's sake but rather to make room for the light because in the midst of the lonliness and death we come to realize what is at the heart of the novel's overlapping stories. The ghosts are supernatural manifestations of a truth that is presented as a hunch...that we leave in others' lives our traces, our love, in more ways than we will ever fully realize.

You'll be surprised and enchanted at how much drama and humanity are packed into Barzak's novel-in-stories. Each chapter is an episode that evokes the next, and the last chapter illuminates the first. Amid the cities and countryside of contemporary Japan the author's characters, mainly in their twenties and thirties, both American and Japanese, at times encounter each other and interact quite dramatically. At other points people slip past with barely a glance. You'll find yourself watching and waiting for the appearance of characters you've seen in one chapter to appear later on. The novel is rich in magic: one character is struck with inexplicable blindness, a spell causes a lover to sleep until he is kissed, ghosts walk, spirits guide troubled people. But the magic is metaphor, the action is naturalistic, the motives are universal. Barzak's themes are Love and Death and the spaces that lie between them.

In Ami, Japan, sixteen year old American Elijah Fulton is bored. His only outlet is running. On an isolated path he meets a red fox who seems to imply he should follow; he does and ends up in a sacred circle. Soon after still suffering ennui, Elijah without telling anyone takes the train to Tokyo. After spending the day there, he tries to find the train back to the town where he, his parents and younger sister reside, but fails; no one seems to help him until a teen calling herself Midori helps him as she is going there too. After leaving the train at Ami they walk together until she heads to her father's farm while he goes home. Later he learns Midori committed suicide thirteen years ago. In Tokyo, Hitumi meets Kazuko in a restaurant after each of their respective dates let them down. Soon afterward Asami and Tadashi the only male of the four form a suicide club pact that reminds Hitumi of her late friend Midori. More a series of somewhat related vignettes rather than short stories or a novel, THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING is a deep look at loneliness and its twin need to belong to others. Christopher Barzak makes the case that the human need for companionship is a basic requirement just a notch less critical than physical survival needs like food, water and shelter. Well written with more episodes than those above, but somewhat depressing because part of belonging could lead to negative consequences like forming a suicide club pact. Fans who appreciate a powerful character study that gets into the essence of human need (think of the Maslow's hierarchy) will relish this engaging but gloomy glimpse into the human psyche. Harriet Klausner