The best way I can describe how Sisters in Yellow made me feel is wrung out. Like a bit of fabric left on the ground under a leaky roof or tap, each chapter the drip, drip, dripping water, filling to the point of saturation. Then the ending, when the fabric was picked up and twisted and twisted until every bit of water was squeezed back out, emptied.
I’d only previously read Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs, which I liked but did not love, but Sisters in Yellow really, really worked for me. It’s a ball of contradictions in the best way: slow burning yet propulsive, stoic yet thrilling, unassuming yet memorable. And if you’re wondering how the novel can be all of those things at once, you need only look at its protagonist Hana, who is herself a mess of contradictions as well. She’s naive in some ways but mature in others, obsessed with earning money but quick to give it away, compassionate and self-sacrificing and also dictatorial and ruthless.
The story begins in the present day, when Hana reads a news article about someone she used to know some twenty years before. It dredges up memories that she had willfully repressed. She reaches out to Ran, another friend from the time, who validates her feelings but does not want to speak about the events that Hana is beginning to remember, nor to Hana in general. And so the novel transitions into an extended flashback (that lasts until the final chapter) in which Hana revisits a strange period in her life.
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