The stories left untold are the ones that create the atmosphere of mystery and yearning that permeate the pages of Lion Cross Point ... Masatsugu Ono is a keen stylist whose minimalist, though ever so slightly mannered, handling of language allows him to make the unbearable, tolerable. His use of a close third person narrator to tell Takeru’s story, rather than the more obvious choice of the first person, child narrator, is inspired ... However, Ono’s greatest achievement is the character of Takeru himself, a ten-year-old boy who is exactly what he should be—a child. Not precocious or wise beyond his years, but one who experiences first-hand the Buddhist maxim that life is suffering ... A tragedy made all the more heart-breaking because it is punctuated by acts of human decency performed by strangers.
The details of Takeru’s upsetting past...are shocking, but never overplayed. What’s more, it’s the shifting relationship between Takeru’s shameful memories of what transpired and his gradual adjustment to the kindhearted people and landscapes of his mysterious new surroundings that makes the novel both unsettling and quietly moving ... It’s a mournful, but ultimately uplifting portrait of a boy trying to make sense of his seemingly shattered world in order to create a stronger, more hopeful future.
At the beginning of the passage, and for most of the novel, the narrator is fully omniscient, tells us exactly what Takeru is thinking, feeling, experiencing, but a cloudiness passes over. There are moments when the narrative loses omniscience, is impressionistic at best ... translating these narrative shifts is a beautiful effort by Turvill, and like beautiful efforts, can go unnoticed. ... Ono is nuanced in his creation of a community and family ... Lion Cross Point itself is both threatening and beckoning. The beckoning eventually wins out, a call that these people he comes to know and who come to know him support. The consequences of his response are his to find and his to face, ours to read between what is written.
Lion Cross Point is marked by a dichotomy between the inevitability of suffering and the potential for compassion within those moments. Being a child, Takeru is constantly at the mercy of others, and, time and time again, their decisions place him in painful situations. Every step of the way, though, there is someone to help carry him through it, creating a book that is equal parts heart-wrenching and heartwarming.
Translated sparingly into English by Angus Turvill, the language of Lion Cross Point is at times strikingly minimalist and devoid of definition. Often a paragraph will be lost on the reader ... While most of the novel’s problems stem from a lack of discernible detail, at points it purely clicks and introspective clarity is achieved from simplicity. There may be no hopeful future or happy ending in sight for Takeru—really, there’s no ending at all—and it seems like he is destined for the same bleak life back home when the scorching summer stops. He may have suffered through terribly blunt acts of brutality, but in the kindness he encounters in his ancestral village, he experiences subtle, moving catharsis. A glance at the breathtaking panorama of Lion Cross Point may be brief, but for Takeru, the promontory is unforgettable and lasting in its importance, as magnificent as the dolphins gliding past it.
Blurring distinctions between living and dead, real and imaginary, past and present, Ono uses minimalist language and metaphor to create a gentle yet powerful rendering of the inner turmoil of a boy struggling to comprehend acts of kindness and violence, and feelings of abandonment and shame.
