"Cross García Márquez and Simenon and set the piece on the Sea of Japan, and youll have a feel for Onos latest Fans of Kenzaburo Oes Death by Water and Haruki Murakamis 1Q84 will enjoy Onos enigmatic story. Kirkus (starred review)All societies, whether big or small, try to hide their wounds away. In this, his Mishima Prize-winning masterpiece, Masatsugu Ono considers a fishing village on the Japanese coast. Here a new police chief plays audience for the locals, who routinely approach him with bottles of liquor and stories to tell. As the city council election approaches, and as tongues are loosened by drink, evidence of rampant corruption piles upand a long-held feud between the villages captains of industry, two brothers-in-law, threatens to boil over.Meanwhile, just out of frame, the chiefs teenage daughter is listening, slowly piecing the locals accounts together, reading into their words and poring over the silence they leave behind. As accounts of horrific violenceincluding a dangerous attempt to save some indentured Korean coal mine workers from the Japanese military police and the fate of a group of Chinese refugeessteadily come into focus, she sets out for the Bay, where the tide has recently turned red and an ominous boat from the past has suddenly reappeared.Populated by an infectious cast of characters that includes a solemn drunk with a burden to bear; a scarred woman constantly tormented by the local kids fireworks; a lone communist; and the Silica Four, a group of out-of-work men who love to gossipEcho on the Bay is a quiet, masterful epic in village miniature. Proof again that there are no small storiesand that Historys untreated wounds, no matter how well hidden, fester, always threatening to resurface.
