The Girl Who Became a Fish: Maiden’s Bookshelf

Suwa, a charcoal burner’s daughter, lives together with her father in a small village at a foot of a mountain so remote it doesn’t even appear on maps. Slowly she comes to realize the dark futility of her life, leading to a strange and elliptical transformation… Dazai depicts the adolescent awakening to death and the desire to escape through this quiet and ominous tale. What dark fate awaits beneath the roaring falls? Suwa and her father live alone on the slopes of Horsebare Mountain, eking out the most meager of existences. During the warmer months the beautiful waterfall brings a few sightseers, but when winter comes there is only solitude. Suwa would do anything to escape the life to which her father has resigned himself. And the lure of the river is strong… This early classic from the author of Japan’s greatest modern novel is a dark, elliptical tale of hopelessness that weaves the folklore of the mountains into an anti-coming-of-age story as vividly relevant today as it was when it was written nearly a hundred years ago. —- ISBN: 9781647291815