Mountain Devil

Recommend: Yes.

The Parchinko Parlour is a quiet achiever. The narrator is Claire. Don’t be fooled by her Western name, this is a distinctly East Asian story. Claire is born to a South Korean mother. She spent her higher education years in Switzerland. But Claire is nearly thirty. And like all nearly thirty year olds she is floating around, hoping a gust of wind blows her in the right direction. It’s not explicitly referenced in the novel but I get the sense Claire has probably spent three years too many writing a thesis and her swiss boyfriend is a comfort but not an anchor.

Claire’s grandparents are South Korean but moved to Japan decades ago due to the war. Thankfully, this is not a novel concerned much with history. There’s reference to the war, quick and matter-of-fact, but there’s no trauma being investigated. It’s more a novel that lives in a calm moment in life where a turning point is carefully evaded. There seem to be some obvious decisions that need to be made in Claire’s life – what will the shape of her career be? Will she ditch her boyfriend who she is clearing growing distant from? The joy of The Parchinko Parlour is that all these questions are put on the backburner while Claire visits her grandparents in Japan.

Claire widdles away her free time in Japan tutoring a pre-teen in French. Language is the strongest motif of the book. Her grandparents never properly learnt Japanese and this isolates them. Claire can’t really speak Korean. There are some fragments of English that get thrown in the mix. The grandparents and Claire converse in a strained manner across these three languages. Claire’s not even fluent in French, so her tutoring is mechanical and ineffective. Incomplete languages are symbolic of the incomplete relationships Claire has. She gets along with her young pre-teen student but in reality they are near strangers to each other. She respects and helps her grandparents but they are from a different context and it is impossible for Claire to relate.

I found this to be a lovely book. It has a restricted scope – a summer in Japan – and doesn’t mix itself up in any narrative tricks. The narrator is always Claire, there is no switching between perspectives. The timeline is chronological. In the English translation, there are not foreign words despite much of the novel being set in different languages. This all works in the favour of the book.

I was particularly a fan of some of the more poetic descriptions. They were intriguing yet clearly executed.

Mieko declares she has something to show me. She wants to take me up to the roof.

We climb the emergency staircase and step out onto a platform. Air vents cling to its surface like leeches. Smoke billows up from below. Looking down, all you can see are low-rise buildings, no higher than the lampposts, lights coming on in the windows. Signposts. No cars. Everything seems to float, like jellyfish in the sky.

Claire is often mistaken for as a Japanese native during her summer in Japan. It’s not unlike the way Claire is mistaken for having a plan for her future. In truth, she is a foreigner in Japan and a foreigner in her own skin. Sit back and relax, enjoy the time as a tourist.