Youth, Memory, and Loss; Ghosts by Kita Morio

Ghosts, originally 幽霊 (yuurei) in Japanese, is the story of a young man coming to terms with his past in the wake of the end of World War II. Plagued by deaths, frailty, and the struggles of ordinary adolescence, the protagonist loses himself in his memories, seemingly desperate to find something to cling to, to discover the meaning and worth in his past.

The story itself is nearly plotless, allowing Kita to instead focus on isolating incidents with the utmost detail, with prose so meticulous that the images are brought to life as paintings of the fullest color. Many of these events are remarkably mundane- eating a pickled plum in rice porridge while sick, the exploits of an ameteur magician uncle- but they each bring out an important aspect of the protagonist's personality, developing his character with a clear and distinct voice, and distorting the world into his own fictionalized bias. In this sense, Kita is very much a genius. He perfectly captures not only the memories themselves, but their small significances, without ever allowing a single word to be wasted.

The negative aspects of the work stem from Kita's premise as a whole. Ultimately, the book is more of a work of art than it is a story. Enjoyable, yes, meaningful, yes, but hardly a substantial tale. I personally find this style very compelling, but in the end it forces a lot of thought and inference onto the reader, which is a somewhat ameteurish style to write in. A good writer draws the reader in, rather than leaving the reader to initially immerse themselves in the world. Still, if you can take that initial step, Ghosts is never a book you will have been sorry to pick up.

SCORE: 83/100