Even though Hiro and Aki remember key events from their own distinct vantage points, they come to a new understanding of their past and the secrets that have been hidden from them...Throughout the book, Onda repeatedly returns to images of clocks, alluding to the complex associations between time and memory...The only remaining object in their apartment is an expensive photo frame with a timepiece...Looking at it, they imagine how their story could have turned out differently...Then focusing their attention to a snapshot from the hike, they consider which emotions shine through—grief or joy, frustration or love...After all, memories, like photos, can be seen through different filters...While some memories swim to the surface easily, some are distorted by time, and others do their best to remain buried...Ultimately, Onda’s novel centers on uncovering deeper aspects of the past, and readers won’t be able to stop reading until the solution comes to light.
... dreamy, circuitous ... Flickering, fragmented, stifled, wavering, twisting, turning — this impression, more than any particulars of plot or character, is what makes Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight memorable ... Onda is an intriguing author, a genre novelist who writes neither neatly within nor self-consciously against genre conventions. Her narratives are elusive and bewildering, and half the fun of reading them is looping around, testing the walls, engaging and puzzling out their labyrinthine structures. But fans of The Aosawa Murders might miss the gripping mystery and eerie, quivering energy of that work. Fish Swimming doesn’t lack for originality, but its substance is less compelling than its form. The fish are hard to pin down, sure, and there’s some pleasure to be had in watching them. This is not quite enough, though, to sustain a suspense novel. The fish just kind of swim from place to place, making interesting patterns and a few jumping splashes in a still pond...All the tension arises from the claustrophobic setup .. .what drives the novel is not a mounting sense of danger, but a series of wild epiphanies that fall like stones then disappear, leaving only the vague, lingering feeling that the water has been disturbed.
... a challenging work ... more insular than The Aosawa Murders ... The committed reader may admire this clinical demonstration of the workings of two mercurial personalities. A less indulgent customer may ask (as does Hiro, near the end of this demanding work), 'What did we resolve? And what didn’t we resolve? I can’t make sense of it any more.'
... riveting, tightly plotted ... Onda is an expertly sly storyteller, deft with digressions and diversions. Seemingly simple statements--'That's a lie'--are hardly so straightforward and prove to be multilayered clues to more intricate reveals. But neither of her protagonists is a particularly reliable narrator. Onda ingeniously manipulates captivated readers as she interrogates the instability of memories, how well we can ever really know one another and the capricious nature of love--and revenge
It is very difficult to talk about the massive revelations that the book’s latter half delivers without giving anything away, but suffice to say, when they finally come, it is like a volley of punches to the gut, tearing away any remaining semblance of safety the reader has, and dangling them over an abyss of vertigo-inducing nausea...Onda toys with primal fears; insects, being buried, children in peril - and they terrify all the more because of the repetitive, cyclical manner in which they are employed...Like something from a nightmare by way of a David Lynch movie, the eerieness gets into us like a bad itch...Although the novel could ostensibly be touted as ‘crime’ fiction, as with The Aosawa Murders, the tone is often far closer to psychological horror...Fans of the likes of Ogawa Yoko will find plenty to enjoy here, and the book’s biggest draw can be summed up in its relentless probing and unpacking of the deepest recesses of morality...What drives us to act the way we do?...Who are we really?...Time and again, Onda forces us to confront the ugly truths behind these questions...In doing so, she comes very close to conveying in the textual format what it might mean to be ‘human’, with all the messy, fallible connotations associated with it.
... a cleverly turned thriller and psychological study. Even as the situation changes, the tension merely shifts elsewhere ... It's a clever idea, and Onda keeps up the suspense quite well; certainly, there are some neat twists, too. The single-night-long confrontation approach, and its back and forth presentation, one chapter in Hiro's head, the next in Aki's, and so on, is a good one, but of course also limiting, despite the recollections that are woven into their narratives; ultimately, Onda does have to pull out the computer and slip in a quick Google (or the like)-search for the finishing touches. Still, this is a good, quick little suspenseful tale, with some nice surprises.
... atmospheric ... That both narrations are direct is a disorienting, interesting device that illustrates the differences in Aki and Hiro’s perceptions of the same events. Their shared memories, in particular of the fateful mountain trip, play out in reminiscences. Each remembers aspects of their relationship not just as it happened, but also as colored by their current knowledge and suspicions. In this way, the book becomes a deep character study of Hiro and Aki, their motivations, their foibles, and their triggers. Unraveling the complex connections between memory and conjecture takes the better part of the night, and with morning light comes a sense of clarity and finality ... an enigmatic novel about memory, perception, and time.
Onda plays with ideas of attraction, truth and memory like building blocks: one piece on top of another in a carefully constructed tower. The chapters stack up in increasingly precarious constructions that defy expectations as the author moves through genres ... The first two chapters reveal that Aki and Hiro are both determined to force the other to confess their crime. It’s a powerful setup, and Onda’s choice to swap perspectives, alternating between narrators each chapter, adds to the tension as the two protagonists probe for what really happened in the mountains ... In the third act, Onda once again switches genres as the novel confronts societal taboos and reads more as a philosophical dialogue on desire and self-actualization. To say much more spoils one of the great pleasures of the story — the novel may be compact in page count but overflows with thoughtful implications.
Onda’s second novel to be translated into English is a psychological thriller about a young couple, Aki and Hiro, who are about to end their troubled relationship...The two fell in love during college and were convinced that they were brother and sister who’d been separated when Aki was adopted as a child...They went on a wilderness trek in the hopes of meeting their estranged father, their guide on the trek...His unexplained death begins to unravel their relationship...A psychological battle ensues, with Hiro and Aki alternating their versions of events...The story delves into the mysteries of romantic love, memory, and the secrets kept in relationships...This complex novel focuses on the raw emotionality of young love, with a darker 'he said/she said' plot...A must-read for fans of domestic suspense.
The translation by Alison Watts effectively conveys this sense of gradual discovery – about the guide, about the siblings’ relationship, about their un-twin-like misinterpretations of the other’s state of mind, about the past and perhaps even about their futures. Onda has a lovely, slow-moving and relatively unadorned style of writing. But beneath the placid surface is a tidal wave of emotion. She minimises physical description in lieu of emotional nuance, resulting in a complex and memorable story.
Artful and enigmatic ... This tour de force demonstrates how suggesting events can be so much more powerful than explicitly depicting them. Fans of subtle psychological thrillers will be enthralled.
