Product Description

Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled and occasionally cruel. Now Maria's father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a 'normal' family. When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love, and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi's inner strength and the real possibility of losing her.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #426940 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-03
• Original language: Japanese
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
'Her novels can have the effect of addictive drugs... Compact, accessible and dangerously addictive' The Times

About the Author
Banana Yoshimoto was born in 1964. She is the author of Kitchen, Lizard, N.P., Amrita and Asleep. Her stories, novels and essays have won numerous prizes both in Japan and abroad. She lives in Tokyo.

Customer Reviews

Simple, delicate and hearfelt.
We may not see it all the time, but in Goodbye Tsugumi, Banana Yoshimoto is there to show us that there is beauty in the simplest things and truth in life's most brutal moments. Using delicate and heartfelt prose she has taken what is actually a rather simplistic story and made every sentence flow and every page surprise with the beauty of the smallest everyday thing. From leftover cakes to forgotten mailboxes, everything can mean more when looked at a certain way.

A moving book that is matched only by Kitchen
Together with Kitchen, Goodbye Tsugumi shows Banana Yoshimoto's clear ability to make the mundane glorious and the supernatural and unbelievably unlikely commonplace and plausible.

It is strange how such ordinary events as descibed in this book can be so enthralling, and Yoshimoto creates precise pictures of moods like no other author I have read can.

The paradoxical concept of an amazingly frail but boisterous and arrogant girl is put across to the reader so that you adopt Maria, the main character's opinions on her - it is a love-hate relationship that is only resolved towards the end of the book.

It is impossible to describe what makes this book so intense to read and so enjoyable, but perhaps it is the unpredictability of the plot or Yoshimoto's trademark lucid descriptions. It could even be down to something as frivolous as the 'special' typeface and wide line spacing which make the book so pleasurable and easy to read, even to a sceptic such as myself.

This book should be read in as few sittings as possible.

A good read.
This was a Christmas present from a friend as I'd heard about this author and was interested in trying her books. I don't know if this is a good one to have started with or not but it's a lovely story.

It's about 3 girls - Tsugumi, Maria and Yoko. Tsugumi and Yoko are sisters and Maria their cousin (she is the narrator). It's about their lives, their family and growing up along with all the problems that brings. Whilst simple in style, it is an enjoyable read. Perhaps a little too slow for me in that I remained detached from the characters, always feeling like an outsider.

I'd like to read her other work, in time. I don't feel I could rush out and read something else by her right now. This book will stay in my memory as a lovely little tale.