Title: 君の話
Author: 三秋 縋
I was sitting on this novel for no reason since I grabbed it after finishing 三日間の幸福 (mikkakan no koufuku) like 5 years ago, I was interested in reading more from Sugaru Miaki since his writing style reminded me of Setoguchi and he deals with themes I adore like depression, love, loneliness, etc in a gloomy atmosphere, but also capable of showing those peeks of happy times when needed. Miaki is finally releasing a new book real soon after 6 years, so what better time to read this. Kimi no Hanashi was actually his last one before the break.
Kimi no Hanashi takes place in the modern world but there have been some technological advancements to easily manipulate your own memories (義憶), so if you want you can order some medicine with nanobots to drink that can delete some bad event you don’t want to remember, or maybe create imaginary friends you hang out with, and well, stuff like that. The protagonist Chihiro is a 20 year old normal university guy except for the fact he’s a total loner that grew up with no friends and family issues since their parents never paid him any attention and were addicted to this artifical memories. He hates this technology but still decides to use it to forget his entire childhood (or lack of you could say) and move on, but due to a “mistake” he ends up with the memories of the most perfect dreamt of stereotyped childhood with an imaginary osananajimi called Touka.
From there of Chihiro starts questioning everything and going on a crazy missmatch of thoughts having short flashbacks of sweet memories with Touka while dealing with the void of his present life, slowly losing it until he starts imagining that Touka is actually real, that’s it until his new neighbour is actually Touka, or a girl that looks like her, same name and knows him. From there on his schizo meter ramps up to the max since he obviously knows Touka comes from fake memories. The first half of the book follows Chihiro closely while investigating what is going on, how this new memory technology works, and what is her hustle. I absolutely loved this entire first half, from making theories about Touka, symphatizing with Chihiro and his doomer, yet smooth narration, the nostalgic quick flashbacks that you wish you could have experienced in your life. It’s about the perfect mix of everything with good pacing and killer writing in general. It’s basically the weird ボーイミーツガール kind of plot that I love.
One aspect I really liked in comparasion with 三日間の幸福 is that the external elements, in this case all the SF technology stuff is better implemented into the overall plot without being too intrusive into the character development (aka seishun feels). The second part feels more like an ura route from Touka’s POV where you get a proper explanation of the story with her motivations focusing a lot more into all the memory stuff. It goes hard into love and existentialism and how it links with your memories. It’s a funny story since it’s basically two different persons that fall in love with each other due to fake memories from a made up tale, but does it matter if they are fake?
The second part was a lot more of a normal narrative than I expected, it’s a seishun story that didn’t go with the usual happy route, but other than that it’s very straightforward, same as the ending, works for your seishun plot but didn’t had the special feeling the first part had. I mean the first part is as complete as it could get so extending it or trying to make the entire book from Chihiro’s POV wouldn’t have worked so not much else to do, Miaki was probably more inspired with the original idea for the first part and then he had to fill the gaps to make it into a working story. The second part is still good enough though.
Anyway still one of the best books I have read in a long while, feels like a ephemeral tragic love story with heavy 優しい nostalgic summer vibes, it’s also solid in all angles: setting, writing, ideas/themes. Strong recommendation to anyone that likes good things. Excited for the new book coming out, i’ll definetly not take too long to read it this time.