Michikusa House

by Emily Grandy

Winona Heeley spent the last year of recovery from eating disorders in rural Japan, at Michikusa House, alongside one other full-time Jun Nakashima. Like Winona, Jun was a recovering addict and college dropout. While they bonded over rituals of growing their own food and preparing meals, they changed each other's lives by reconstructing long-held beliefs about shame, identity, and renewal.

 

But after Winona returns to her Midwest hometown, Jun vanishes.

 

Two years pass and Winona, seeking revival through gardening, accepts a job as a groundskeeper at a local cemetery...and begins searching for Jun Nakashima once more. 

Genres: Fiction

Kindle Edition

First published September 27, 2023

Reviews

[Audrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring story with a predictable ending. The main character is the only one that has personality, otherwise everyone else is bland. It felt more like the author wanted to write about how the living style in Japan differed with America’s. Also, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have the main character be immature, in fact I think it teaches the reader a lot when the characters differ from them, but don’t have that be the ONLY interesting thing about the book, because then it makes me dislike the book!

Also the immature main character saying “Not for the first time, but I noticed the age difference between us through her language” when talking about a younger woman has a LOT of audacity.

[Jordan]

Really conflicted about this book. I want to give it 4 stars but also feel like I can’t. Someone else read this soon so we can discuss

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her early twenties, American Winona (Win) Heely has struggled with dietary problems, self-esteem, and career pressures. When her problems elevated into a crisis, Win’s family sent her to a Japanese retreat called Michikusa House to board with Shoko, an artist friend of her mother’s. For thirteen months, Win immersed herself in craft, nature, and the making and consuming of healthy food. Also on the menu was solitude. In the prologue, Win tells us, “Apart from Shoko and her husband, there was only one other full-time resident at Michikusa House that year. His name was Jun Nakashima and the only way to impress him was in the kitchen.”

The novel begins after Win returns from her Japanese retreat. She rents a small house near her hometown and school, a house adjacent to a cemetery. Each day, she awakens to the sounds of the workers, the leaf blowers and lawnmowers that maintain these consecrated grounds. Someone else might find the site unsettling, but Win finds it comforting. “I stare straight ahead, taking in the grassy slope decorated with weathered monuments and evergreen shrubbery. It makes me feel better. No matter what happens in this life, no matter what we accomplish or learn or acquire, we all end up in the same place.

As happens in the story, Winona transitions from descriptions of setting into subtle reveals of her character and psychology. One of the novel’s pleasures is piecing together Winona from the clues she offers us—and herself. Michikusa house is a novel of a young woman’s self-discovery.

Win takes a part-time job and works to finish her undergraduate degree. She resumes her relationship with Liam, an ambitious and sensible young man who is thought by everyone to be part of her future. Although they have been together for years, Win is at a loss to explain his occupation. “The fact I still don’t entirely understand what he does―something with nuclear energy systems, work he’s not allowed to talk about―speaks to one of several imbalances in our relationship.”

I sensed early on that even if Win were given the opportunity to extract the details of Liam’s work, she would pass. If Michikusa house effected a positive change in Win, it also instilled a mysterious longing.
The tranquility and purity of her stay at Michikusa house tugs at Win and moves her to question the middle-class life laid out before her. Her attempts to contact Jun fail, which intensifies her struggle. Jun has disappeared. Previous phone numbers no longer work, and the internet has been scrubbed of his presence. Through flashbacks, she reveals the course of her relationship with Jun, a relationship integrated with food and its production.

In beguiling prose, Grandy captures the essence of a man who rarely appears in literature: one uninterested in wealth, fame or glory, much less amorous conquests. What drives him?
“I had never known anyone with a passion for food before, whose familiarity with ingredients surpassed his intimacy with other humans. That is to say, Jun Nakashima was an outstanding cook, had the most refined, discerning palate of anyone I had ever met. Jun always said he would rather eat at home than suffer a disappointing meal at a restaurant, and he found most restaurants disappointing. Though, I should add one disclaimer: he did enjoy guessing ingredients that went into making dishes, even those he disfavored. This turned out to be an easy challenge at Michikusa House, even for me, where foods laid upon the table resembled their original forms: grilled fish, boiled satsumaimo, pickled radish, miso soup with floating seaweed tendrils, steamed white rice.”

But Jun’s passion for food goes deeper than just the culinary arts. “ . . . he hoped to cultivate the best, most superior flavors in foods. He’d had a hunch that good food did not arise solely from the kitchen but began its life in good soil, be it farmland, mountaintop, or river bottom.”

But within Win’s fascination with Jun and his apotheosis of food is a paradox. The crisis that sent her to Michikusa house was bulimia, an eating disorder that involves bouts of overeating followed by purging. She explains how it came upon her.

“I began dabbling in the art of weight loss under the guise of self-improvement or, possibly, invoking drama to avoid seeming ordinary, ugly, or forgettable. After graduation, he (Liam) witnessed the transformation that made me almost unrecognizable: the turning inward, the emotional detachment. Starving. After all, there were jeans to fit into, a tragic aesthetic to apply like mascara.”

Win has faced the pressure of our culture to obtain that perfect unobtainable body. At Michikusa House there were no mirrors.

Jun’s disappearance and several mysterious occurences trigger Win’s desperate search for the young man and becomes the spine of this involving and important novel. A literary romance of challenging honesty.

[Catrina Gilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly loved this book! I have a softness for Japan’s 田舎　countryside so I enjoyed reading about it. The main character is young and immature, she frustrated me a lot with her selfish behavior, but by the end of the book she came to some necessary realizations. I also thought her relationship to Jun was a little shallow as well like she was indeed trying to fill a hole. Yet I still found myself rooting for their reunion.

All in all this is a book I have in mind to lend to many friends who also crave carving their own path in this life.

[Susan Zupancic]

This is a beautifully written book. Lush in sensory detail, you see, touch, smell and taste everything Winona experiences. I loved how the author transitioned between past and present through her thoughtful memories. The author’s drawings at the beginning of each chapter, are beautiful and tie-in to the theme of what’s to come. It is hard to believe that this is a debut novel. I will anxiously await this author’s next book.

[Lily Brush · Rating 2 out of 5]

Solid, but…

Michikusa House followed Winona, a woman in her mid twenties who has recovered from an eating disorder. She is sent to Japan to Michikusa House, a house in the countryside where she learns how to grow and cook food under Shoko, a family friend.
Let’s start with the good things: This book is very well written, especially for a debut novel. It is surprisingly a very cozy and wholesome book, despite the subject matter being rather dark. We follow two storylines, one in Ohio where Winona lives, and the other in the past during her time in Japan. The flashbacks are intentional and don’t feel forced, and allow for the reader to engage in both stories. Emily writes her atmospheres very tenderly and everything feels (for the most part) very believable and vivid. The first half of the book is so enjoyable and easy to get into. As for Winona’s eating disorder, I felt that Emily didn’t punish her for unnecessary things like some authors may have.
The second half, however: the longer the book went on, the less engaged I was. My biggest grievance was that nothing feels deserved and nothing bad happens. We know Winona had an eating disorder, but it is unclear how that process was for her, so we have no basis for her experience. Whenever she mentions that she had an eating disorder, I genuinely forget that she had it at all because of how little it really affects her life or her relationships, or anything. The more I learned about what Winona did when she was away in Japan, the less I liked her. She did a bad thing, but I don’t even want to defend her because I don’t care about her, because I don’t sympathize with her. It isn’t like she struggled to get healthcare, so I can’t feel relieved that she recovered, and it’s also not like she ever explained her experience with her eating disorder, or how that changed her relationships with her boyfriend, or Jun, or really even her family. The whole damn thing is
Just an afterthought. If I’m not given a reason to care about Winona’s we’ll being, then she should at least suffer a little bit (and more than just surface level boy problems, because that’s not what this book is about, right?) Emily doesn’t info dump in this book very often, unless it is about the science of food, or whatever else. I understand that the author is a scientist, but if I wanted to learn about science and how the body works, I could just read another book. It didn’t add anything to the plot, or to Winona’s character. The same goes for the Instagram comments between Winona and Jun. Throughout all of these interactions is nothing of substance to the plot, a lot of info dumping about Fukushima, which in the proper context could have been valuable in some sense, I guess. But it’s no surprise when we find out that it was Jun all along. We’re lead on to believe that something terrible happened to Jun, and so we want to know why he went missing in the first place, because he’s one of the only likable characters, and when it’s finally revealed why exactly he went off the radar, the book feels pointless. It felt like Emily egged me on the entire book, making me hope and wait for something crazy to happen, all to reveal that nothing actually happened in the end, and none of the characters really go unpunished for their actions or behavior.
As for Jim’s character, I wish we had gotten more about him other than he liked to cook and take photographs. We learn early on that he was a former smoker, and then eventually went to rehab and learned to quit, but once again we don’t actually care because we don’t get to see him in that state, nor does it seem to effect him AT ALL.
Overall, Michikusa house is a great concept, and it would have been 5 stars if we had gotten to see the characters more vulnerably. There is so much to work with, but in the end I felt that it wasn’t thought out well enough. And don’t even get me started on the failed Dodge plot device and the ending. I was just hoping for more.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more! My biggest pain points was that I felt the premise of this story had so much potential, but Michikusa House is entirely shown in flashbacks; we’re never really there as a full scene, or in a moment-by-moment scenario. These sections are also sparsed throughout the book, and Winona’s life of readjusting to life in America/the suburbs, though relatable, felt very flat. Maybe this is the point, in showing how much growth Winona had in Japan, but there’s little background on Winona’s ED, or how she wants to help living beings that aren’t people. Like, could she have the same experiences by working as a farmhand again? What’s stopping her from achieving her aspirations when she comes home?


I also thought the relationship between Winona and Jun to be sadly superficial. Jun read to me as just a playboy-type with his cockeyed grin over and over, and I really wanted to understand the deep connection they seem to share. I think adjusting the POV to not be flashbacks could help with this.

[Maddie Fittro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book when i was in Milwaukee and had no idea it was set in Cleveland! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and loved all of the sketches throughout. I think this book is going to stick with me for a while

[Andrew Shafer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michikusa House takes readers on a sensory, seasonally-inspired journey, from Cleveland’s east side neighborhood to Kyushu Island in Japan and back again. Emily is a writer who excels at minute observation, celebrating life’s simplest pleasures in a way you’ll want to savor. For me, it was the incorporation and deep respect for Japanese culture that I found most enjoyable. Michikusa House lies in the Japanese satoyama and it's there that the main character, Winona, learns to cook and grow her own food for the first time in her life. It’s this close connection to where her food comes from, its seasonality, adventures in the kitchen, and Japan’s unique foraging culture that begins to transform Winona's view of the world and her own place in it.

Like any well-prepared meal, the most essential element in this novel is time. The author takes time with every scene, allowing readers to relish every micro season, from the fresh, bitter tastes of spring to the plump, ripe flavors of summer. But she gives equal attention and respect to the fading seasons, showing readers how to celebrate what the colder months have to offer. Too often our modern day lives are disconnected from natural shifts—bird migrations, shortening days, the scent of cold air. In our temperature-controlled homes and offices we become anesthetized. Michikusa House is a novel that invites readers to rekindle their relationship with the more-than-human world just outside their front door, no matter the season.

[ADemci]

Emily has the ability to transcribe everyday mundane moments into poetry, words flowing with seeming ease.

Take this:

"Autumn, meanwhile, went about its work wilting the flowers and curling the leaves, yellowing the fields, drawing life back into the earth."

She draws life and energy from the ordinary and sets it into her fiction.

Or wonder, beauty & life in a cemetery:

"I touch the little sponge of moss and gently run my finger over the coral reef of the lichen, feeling some regret that I can- not name them, that I do not know them beyond superficial recognition. How peculiar, I think, that I never thought to admire them more closely before now, these little lives being lived out on these craggy surfaces."

And:

"Near a tray bearing fruit scraps and leafy greens set out in the gravel, I count three tortoises with rough, bulbous shells marked with yellow lines radiating from the center of each dark plate. I find their unhurried, ungraceful movements utterly endearing and decide to sit on the adjacent rock wall and watch them for a while. Oh, to care for little else than the timely arrival of your next meal; no predators, no hunting, not a care in the world... what a life. "


Her thoughtful prose is like being guided by someone with a lot to share and who will do so in the most beautiful of ways.

Writing this novel feels like an affirmative act from Emily, transforming sickness into health and perhaps if I'm not mistaken, pointing others, regardless of their suffering, towards finding their own unique way forward.

This is a post-advance-review-copy-review, hyphens not included.

[J.J. Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given the strength of Michikusa House's writing, it's hard to believe this is Emily's debut novel. Telling the story of Win, a young woman who stays at Michikusa House in rural Japan to recover after a difficult past, and Jun, who she meets there, it's a heartfelt story of love, recovery, and the transformative power of food. The descriptions are rich, the characters feel real, and you'll come away with a deeper appreciation of not just the complex connections that exist between people, but the planet we all call home.

[Meera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emily Grandy’s debut novel, Michikusa House, (Homebound Publications Landmark Prize Fiction Winner, 2023) is a sensory journey of self-discovery and the restorative power of food.
The heroine of this story, Winona Heeley, is a complicated young woman who finds solace from her troubled past in the healing atmosphere of Michikusa House, a working farm in rural Japan.
Win (affectionately known as Win-Chin or Win-Chime) is the narrator of this charming novel who is also recovering from an eating disorder. So, her mother, a well-known ceramicist, urges her to go recuperate at Michikusa House on Japan’s Kyushu Island.
The owner of the farm, a friend of Win’s mother, Shoko Hanada, and her husband welcome Win. But it is another house guest, Jun Nakashima, who leaves an indelible impression on Win’s soul and mind.
Nakashima, an aspiring chef, shares his passion with Win and the transformative power of cooking. Working in the kitchen is sacred, almost a religion, to the young chef.
“Cooking connects everything,” he said. “If not for sun and rain and insects and many hard-working people, so many things working together in just the right way, we wouldn’t have ingredients to make a delicious soup like this one to warm us on a cold day.”
He is referring to Japanese nabe or nabemono, a soothing bowl of fragrant broth, accompanied by bits of tender meat and finely chopped fresh and pickled vegetables. The nabe is a complex and nuanced dish much like Grandy’s vivid and evocative writing. The savory flavor of nabe, and Grandy’s lyrical prose, will linger on the diner’s palate long after the final spoonful/sentence.
This book is loosely based on Grandy’s own brush with an eating disorder, so the emotions and writing feel very personal and authentic. She moves the reader effortlessly back and forth between Win’s past and present. The reader is swept along as Win decides to drop out of the nutritional science program, break off a relationship with a longtime boyfriend, and take on a landscaping job at a nearby cemetery. Weeding, cleaning graves, and removing snow in the cemetery are just what Win needs to clear the cobwebs in her mind. Ultimately, Win will have to reconcile her past and future to find peace and love.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's difficult to write a complex novel that leaves you feeling inspired but Emily Grandy has done it in Michikusa House. In this skillfully plotted coming-of-age novel, the main character Win's challenge is to figure out how to integrate what happened at the year-long artist resdiency at Michikusa House with the life she returned to--her boyfriend and parents. The book delves into how to live a good life in this out-of-control world. Expertly toggling between the past and present, the novel is both suspensful with lush prose. It was hard to put down as I wondered how Win would handle the challenges of loving her parents, figuring out her romantic life, all while trying to seek out her calling to be closer to the natural world in a society that doesn't value that goal. I left the book wanting to slow my life down and savor it.

[Carol Grandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young woman searching for purpose through her recovery from serious illness, finds healing and compassion in the natural world at Michikusa House. A well thought out and beautifully written story of love, heartache, loss, and connection that will touch your heart!

[Patrick Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly horrendous.

[Rob Grandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutely wonderful.
Let me say at the outset that I am the kind of reader who hears every word as if someone is reading to me, so as I began Michikusa House, I could hear in my mind, the narrator from the movie, To Kill A Mockingbird, now telling this story. The writing is as smooth and lyrical and soulful as Harper Lee’s tale.
I hope Emily won’t mind me saying that for me, this is a beautiful love story, in so many ways; love of family, love of nature, love of friends both close and far away, boyfriend-girlfriend, newfound love, love lost, and finally the hope for love reunited.
I guess it’s clear to see that my favorite stories are love stories.
This one is timeless.

Emily Grandy

[Amanda Pastrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is my favorite book i've ever read. i loved it. the story is so unique and i love the imagery and the way the protagonist sees/interacts with her world. i resonated with the idea of longing for a trip you were once on and romanticizing that time in your life (hello study abroad). i've also never read something that described how it feels to anxiety spiral. it was like the author took my brain and put it on the page. it's also crazy to me that the literal 2 places mentioned in the book that are in the US are Milwaukee and Cleveland. Lakeview Cemetery is a main setting in the book, which is wild considering I only half-enjoyed my trip there in 5th grade. I will be thinking about this book for quite a long time and recommend it to anyone and everyone.

[Cora Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t do this story justice. I picked it up randomly at an airport, and now it’s 4 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep until I knew what happened to Win and Jun and Shoka and all the rest. The story is slow, but in such a beautifully written manner, it made me appreciate the finer details of our daily hustle. As much as I wished for a more explicit ending, I appreciated how the story focused not primarily on Jun and Win but on Win’s individual transformation and development. Now I feel like I have to live on a farm in Japan for a year. Amazing work, truly.

[Clarissa Gadsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an underground read I happened to randomly find at my local indie bookstore. This book follows a female character piecing life together after coming out of an eating disorder rehab center. I appreciate how Winona acknowledges how she seems to create her own problems from spiraling down into an ED to her love life choices. But she also learns how to solve them.

Not to mention Emily Grandy writes so well when piecing this story together. I highly recommend this read if you struggle to take your future into your own hands.

[Mallory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed reading this beautifully written book. The descriptions of food had me looking up recipes and the descriptions of places had me longing to go to them. My favorite part was reading the transformation of the main character from a lost person who was living a life others expected of her to a strong woman who forged her own path following her own interests. I would definitely recommend this book and I am looking forward to reading more by Emily Grandy!

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written story, the struggles of the main character are so movingly described. You are rooting for her throughout. The author's knowledge of Japanese cuisine will delight culinary readers. And I loved the author's drawings that illustrate the beginning of each chapter. A very accomplished first novel.

[Mars Elsheikh · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s so slice of life and comforting to read! Makes the world feel oddly safer