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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Book Review | My Beautiful Shadow
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Book Review | My Beautiful Shadow

This expertly crafted novel dwells too closely on unhappinessat its own cost

My Beautiful Shadow:HarperCollins India,208 pages, `499.Premium
My Beautiful Shadow:

HarperCollins India,
208 pages, `499.

Exquisite gloom

More than 100 years ago, Japan vaulted into global consciousness among the first rank of nations. Its spectacular 1904-05 victory over the Russian empire (both countries coveted control over Manchuria and Korea) was the starting point for a steady economic ascent that did not abate despite the devastating loss in World War II. Today, by all measures, Japan is among the three-four richest countries in the world, with stellar human development in every category.

This success story is not limited to economic achievement. The 2014 Better Life Index published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which surveyed 34 developed countries, found that 86% of Japanese citizens experience more positive than negative experiences and feelings in an average day, which “makes Japan the happiest country in the OECD".

But while happy, satisfied Japanese surely exist, very few appear in the pages of Radhika Jha’s new novel about Kayo, a young housewife in Tokyo. My Beautiful Shadow is a bleak portrayal of Japanese mores, peopled by unremittingly unhappy characters. It presents a deeply cynical picture of a country purportedly in thrall to “a new religion" called Happyism, “the religion that Americans brought us. That is why we did not kill their soldiers when they came to rule us". Kayo herself spirals inexorably downwards as the book unfolds.

That unfolding happens quickly: Jha has a talent for descriptive, allusive prose. Here is Kayo about her best friend: “There was no part of Tomoko that was not perfect. Her ears were small and well-shaped and sat flat against the side of her head. She was tall and slim like a model. Her skin was fine and translucent, and seemed to glow with the kind of pale blue light that belonged only to the finest Chinese porcelain. But beauty, like a candle flame, creates dark shadows where it goes."

Kayo herself is plain, from a family fallen into poverty (there is a partly revealed, predictably sordid backstory about her father being murdered and her mother becoming a prostitute). Tomoko brings colour into her life, first introducing Kayo to a college boy, Ryu, who “reminded me of a bird, he was so brown and silent". And then, with an introduction to the world of dating, movies, restaurants and, especially, dressing up.  From the very first time she wore expensive clothes, Kayo became transported: “I was wearing a black velvet blouse that Tomoko had lent me. The deeply scooped neckline surrounded by old-fashioned cream lace highlighted the whiteness of my breasts and the deep valley between them. We matched the blouse with a plain Burberry skirt, also Tomoko’s, in rich tones of brown, beige and burgundy. The skirt was very short, which I hoped would compensate for the shortness of my legs, especially when compared to Tomoko’s." Glamorous clothing would eventually become her obsession, and downfall.

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The Shibuya district in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Thinkstock

This shuttered, oppressive, rigidly hierarchical milieu is ever-present in the rest of My Beautiful Shadow, as the secretly whimsical protagonist struggles to find moments of escape, a quest that gains momentum when Tomoko bursts back into her life.

Jha’s biographical note indicates that she lived for six years in Tokyo—her writing certainly demonstrates real familiarity with Kayo’s world—but it’s also true that very few characters in this book are allowed even a little leeway outside the standard and tired Japanese clichés.

The husband is an inattentive salaryman, the neighbours are hyper-critical, the other mothers at school are status-obsessed. Only Kayo is different, she is a compelling character whose inner life is often exquisitely drawn out in this expertly executed, but ultimately disappointing and one-dimensional, novel.

The author is a writer, photographer, founder and co-curator of the Goa Arts and Literary Festival.

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Published: 23 Aug 2014, 12:11 AM IST
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