The Earthquake Bird by Susanna JonesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A story involving Lucy Fly, Teiji the photographer and noodle cook, Lily Bridges the superficial girl on the bounce from a pressured relationship, various police officers and a septuagenarian string quartet as well as the families of each.
Lucy is a complex character, a product of a difficult family with bullying brothers. The first-person narrative brings the story alive and the details of her upbringing as well as the immense attention to detail in the descriptions of situations and people provide great insights into what it feels like to go through the experiences she had. I really felt for her. There was an unusual stylistic device of sometimes switching to third person to describe herself, almost as if she had multiple personalities - but that was a tease; a red herring, as it happened. I loved the way she did not tell the police she was in interpreter at her first interview about Lily's disappearance; very English - "I wasn't asked"...
Her life as an interpreter and her hobbies that involved her in the local community, the string quartet, were very typical for the kind of person she was. She reminded me of how my wife would join local music groups as her first job after university took her to live in various towns for a few months each time.
I loved the way that Lucy first met Teiji, the photographer with whom she developed a relationship: "He was leaning over a puddle, apparently taking photographs of it. Water slid over his hair and face but he seemed not to notice. His camera clicked and he moved fluidly to the other side of the puddle. I stared. He appeared to be made of water and ice. I had never seen a man with such delicate fingers, sharp brittle shoulder-blades, transparent brown eyes. He glinted in the neon dark more sharply than the vast ice sculptures of the Sapporo Festival I had marvelled at when I first came to Japan. He was an exhibit of the Tokyo night and so beautiful that I couldn’t walk past him." This graphic description of seeing his reflection first, was like a frame from a manga comic. Very memorable. I liked his troubled mind and the way he had a job in his uncle's noodle shop. Prosaic details like this reminded me of all the 1930s detective novels I used to read; Rex Stout, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, Raymond Chandler and so on. Susanna Jones had that eye for detail as well as a sense of foreboding that made it easy to think the worst of her lead character.
Lily Bridges whimps into Lucy's life through mutual acquaintances and, like Lucy, I took an instant dislike to her. As the relationship grew and Lucy developed more of an almost friendly interaction with Lily (albeit an over-dependent one), Teiji found it difficult to control his primitive urges and moved his attention over to Lily. Not a good move at all, which was bound to end in tears.
The deaths around Lily were strange and disturbing. It was intriguing to see how, eventually, everyone involved from police, to family and string quartet, acknowledged that she might have a sense of guilt, but no one blamed her for simply living her life as best she could. Ultimately, the story is a coming-of-age kind of thing as she finally achieves a more mature adulthood in which she is more comfortable with who and what she is.
I really enjoyed the intrigue, the narrative, the attention to detail and the ultimate resolution of all the loose ends. A masterful book. It has been made into a movie, which I watched as soon as I could. I enjoyed watching that, as well, but the format of movies has to involve slipping a lot of narrative detail that makes this kind of story so absorbing.
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