Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight

by Riku Onda, Alison Watts (Translator)

Overview

"A Quicksilver Mystery That Flickers, Flashes, Twists And Turns." New York Times, 21 July 2022. From the author of The Aosawa Murders, one of the NYT Notable Books of 2020. 

Set in Tokyo over the course of one night, Aki and Hiro have decided to be together one last time in their shared flat before parting. Their relationship has broken down after a mountain trek during which their guide died inexplicably. Now each believes the other to be a murderer and is determined to extract a confession before the night is over. Who is the murderer and what really happened on the mountain?

In the battle of wills between them, the chain of events leading up to this night is gradually revealed in a gripping psychological thriller that keeps the reader in suspense to the very end.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913394592
Publisher:	Bitter Lemon Press, Ltd
Publication date:	07/26/2022
Pages:	286
Sales rank:	605,051
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Riku Onda, born in 1964, has been writing fiction since 1991 and has published prolifically since. She has won the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for New Writers, the Japan Booksellers' Award, the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize and the Naoki Prize. Her work has been adapted for film and television.

 

Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight is her second novel to be published in English. The first was The Aosawa Murders which won the prestigious Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Novel and was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book for 2020.

 

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/23/2022

In this artful and enigmatic suspense novel, Onda (The Aosawa Murders) pulls the ground out from under the reader by undermining beliefs and expectations concerning her two alternating and potentially unreliable narrators. A young couple about to break up, Hiro and Aki, are preparing to spend their last night together in their small apartment in an unnamed Japanese city. In the first chapter, Hiro concludes his dispassionate account of a mundane conversation between them by wondering whether at some point that night he’ll have to force Aki “to say with her own lips that she killed that man?” In the next chapter, Aki reveals that she lied when she told Hiro she would be traveling to Vietnam with friends as a way to ensure that Hiro, whom she suspects of murdering the unidentified man, doesn’t harm her. Onda judiciously and incrementally fills in the backstory about the man, who officially died as the result of an accidental fall. 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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Aosawa Murders

NYT: Chosen as one of Most Notable Books of 2020. “Strange, engrossing, stubbornly non-linear…”

Guardian: One of the Best Mystery Novels of 2020. “Tantalising as a scene glimpsed through a half-open door, this is an utterly immersive puzzler in which nothing is entirely cut and dried.”

WSJ: “Part psychological thriller, part murder mystery—is audacious in conception and brilliant in execution.”

The Times: “Rich and strange, utterly absorbing.”

Globe and Mail: “Can this book open up the world of Japanese crime in the way that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opened up Scandi Noir? I hope so.”

KIRKUS starred review: “This dark and dazzling novel defies easy categorization but consistently tantalizes and surprises.”

Praise for Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight

"A Quicksilver Mystery That Flickers, Flashes, Twists And Turns. A dreamy, circuitous psychological thriller. 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." New York Times

"A masterclass in thriller writing." Daily Mail 

"Book of the Month: an original, unsettling psychological thriller full of dark twists and emotional nihilism." Independent 

" Roams the existential gamut from impulses to flight to reconciliation to suicide pacts. The committed reader will admire this clinical demonstration of the workings of two mercurial personalities." Wall Street Journal. 

"This tour de force demonstrates how suggesting events can be so much more powerful than explicitly depicting them. Fans of psychological thrillers will be enthralled." Publishers Weekly

"Memory, identity, attraction: they are all flickering fish of the mind, changing direction throughout our lives. Elusive but there, they constantly swim just below the surface of our consciousness." Japan Times

The Aosawa Murders also by Riku Onda

Chosen as one of Most Notable Books of 2020. “Strange, engrossing, stubbornly non-linear…” NYT 

One of the Best Mystery Novels of 2020. “Tantalising as a scene glimpsed through a half-open door, this is an utterly immersive puzzler in which nothing is entirely cut and dried.” Guardian

 “Part psychological thriller, part murder mystery—is audacious in conception and brilliant in execution.” WSJ

 “Rich and strange, utterly absorbing.” The Times (London)

“Can this book open up the world of Japanese crime in the way that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opened up Scandi Noir? I hope so.” Globe and Mail

 “This dark and dazzling novel defies easy categorization but consistently tantalizes and surprises.” KIRKUS starred review

From the Publisher

06/10/2022

Onda's second novel to be translated into English (following her critically acclaimed The Aosawa Murders) 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. In their last night together, the hope is to get the other person to confess to murder on the trek. A psychological battle ensues, with Hiro and Aki alternating their versions of events. As they trace their steps into the past, it takes their collective memories to see that maybe it wasn't murder. In the hour before sunrise, they contemplate suicide and their lives moving forward. The story delves into the mysteries of romantic love, memory, and the secrets kept in relationships. VERDICT 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.—Ron Samul

Library Journal