A young girl living on an island subject to very strange phenomena: some days, more or less regular intervals, things disappear. At first, this is just little things, almost trivial, candy lemonade, ribbons, bells and more symbolic things disappear in turn, simply, never to return. One day, they are the birds who leave the island by the thousands to get lost beyond the seas, another day, the flowers whose petals fly away, leaving only the stems of shrubs or dry. Worse still, the islanders do not seem overly concerned because, with things, their memories and emotions related items also erased their memory, Yoko Ogawa very poetically called "cavity Heart. " Hunters of memories, organized militia, ensure that 'no object bound to disappear remains.And what are the books that disappear and are burned in a public place, like the places they inhabit.
Yoko Ogawa married here Kafkaesque absurdity, with subjects approaching Fahrenheit 451.
It adds a finesse and delicacy of the writing that makes reading this novel a true pleasure. Each passage is tasted, everything is fresh and poetry, even if one feels the underlying cynicism that allows to remove any sentimentality in a Japanese style so and so feminine ....
Crystallization secret - Yoko Ogawa
Translated from Japanese by Rose-Marie Makino
Title orginial : Hisoyakana kessbo
Actes Sud - 252 pages
November 2009
