American Fuji, by Sara Backer, is just lovely. You think when you pick it up that it's going to be chick lit, and in fact there are very amusing parts to it, but it's actually a gentle meditation on loss. The setting is Japan, where the protagonist, an American, has been teaching English but has been fired from her job. She has ulcerative colitis (me too), and she is forced by circumstance to take charge of another American, a man who has come to Japan to understand his son's accidental death while on a study abroad program. So it's about loss: loss of control, loss of connections, as well as the direct loss of the death of a son, and the loss of certain hopes for the future because of chronic illness. And it's about learning to live with uncertainty and without the ability to control or understand everything.
I ordered Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling and am looking forward to reading it and to giving it to my niece who has celiac disease and has had a very difficult time with it.
I ordered Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling and am looking forward to reading it and to giving it to my niece who has celiac disease and has had a very difficult time with it.