So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kobo explores (sexual) relationships between people who make the most of life with the cards they were dealt at birth.
Location: Japan
So We Look to the Sky synopsis
Searingly honest and sexually explicit, So We Look to the Sky is a novel told in five linked stories that begin with an affair between a student and a woman ten years his senior, who picks him up for cosplay sex in a comics market. Their scandalous liaison, which the woman’s husband makes public by posting secretly taped video online, frames all of the stories, but each explores a different aspect of the life passages and hardships ordinary people face. A teenager experimenting with sex and then, perhaps, experiencing love and loss; a young, anime-obsessed wife bullied by her mother-in-law to produce the child she and her husband cannot conceive; a high school girl, spurned by the student, realizing that being cute and fertile is all others expect of her; the student’s best friend, who lives in the projects and is left alone to support and care for his voracious, senile grandmother; and the student’s mother, a divorced single parent and midwife, who guides women bringing new life into this world and must rescue her son, crushed by the twin blows of public humiliation and loss, from giving up on his own.
Narrating each story in the distinctive voice of its protagonist, Misumi Kubo weaves themes including sex, love, the female body, gossip, and the bullying that leaves young people feeling burdened and helpless into a profoundly original novel that lingers in the mind for its affirmation of the raw, unquellable force of life.
Book review
From cosplay sex with an older woman to an unrequited crush on a kid in your class. Some relationships are on the edge of what is acceptable and others are too safe. The characters have to deal with the expectations and judgments of others that overshadow what they want for themselves. Step by step, they begin to explore the relationships that make them happy.
The five stories in So We Look to the Sky build on each other, showing how different people deal with the same incident and what else is going on in their lives. As people’s motives and thoughts are exposed, you begin to look at their actions in a different way. These stories remind you not to judge until you know the whole story. All the stories highlight a different aspect of relationships, both romantic and non-romantic. For most of the characters, their relationships and sexual endeavors don’t turn out quite as they expected.
After reading the first few stories, I wrote that the stories in this collection are not very upbeat, but I have since changed my mind about that. My memory of So We Look to the Sky is one of tenderness: if I could influence the stories with my thoughts, I would use gloves so as not to disrupt the life the characters are building for themselves. They’re going to make it…
My favorite story is A Goldenrod Sky. I don’t know if it’s good that I have fond memories of the subtle interactions between Taoka and Ryota, but I do. I still stand by the idea that everything that happened was told and nothing happened between the lines. After all, the other stories contain explicit (sex) scenes.
I like how all the characters realistically look at their situation and their desires and hopes for life. Most are aware of what the “easy” option would be, but they try to do what feels right for them. All of the stories grabbed me from the beginning. Together, they reduce the distance between you and the main characters as you read about the characters hesitantly taking their first steps toward – or away from – the person they love.
Interested?
Get your copy of So We Look to the Sky from Amazon (available 3 August 2021).
Book details
Title: So We Look to the Sky
Author: Misumi Kubo
Translator: Polly Barton
Language: English
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Pages: 288
ISBN (13): 9781951627713
Publication date: 3 August 2021
About the author and translator
Misumi Kubo withdrew from junior college and worked for an advertising company before turning freelance as a writer and editor. She is the author of seven novels. She won the R-18 Literature Prize in 2009 for the short story that became the first chapter of So We Look to the Sky, her debut novel, which won the Shugoro Yamamoto Prize, won second place in the voting for the national Booksellers’ Award, was a runaway bestseller, and was named Book Magazine’s Book of the Year. Her next novel, Stray Whale on a Sunny Day, won the Futaro Yamada Prize, and in 2018, Staring at Our Hands was shortlisted for the Naoki Prize. She lives in Japan.
Polly Barton is a translator of Japanese fiction and nonfiction. She has translated short stories for Words Without Borders, the White Review, and GRANTA. Full-length translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Matsuda Aoko, Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura. After being awarded the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, she has recently published a nonfiction book entitled Fifty Sounds.
Many thanks to Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
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