A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

It took me over half the book to work out why this wasn't quite working for me. This is exactly the kind of genre I love: a historical family drama spanning the years and exploring the various difficulties and secrets between relations. My biggest complaint was the author's decision to make our narrator, Amaterasu, omniscient, all-knowing and able to describe exactly how other people felt, exactly what they saw and what they were thinking, simply through reading a few letters and diary entries. If Copleton wanted to write about all the characters' thoughts, then she simply shouldn't have written this in first person, in my opinion. It makes Amaterasu's account seem disingenuous or dishonest, and I think this is the main reason I failed to connect with her family's story as much as I'd hoped.

In addition to that, I didn't find most of the plot believable and some of it was overly melodramatic. I'm also slightly confused over Sato's character, as personally I think he is despicable without any redeeming qualities, but I get the sense we are meant to feel some sort of sympathy for me.

Despite not loving this one, I would like to thank the publisher for sending me the review copy, especially as it is one of best formatted review copies I've ever received (not that I've received that many but still). Usually ebook review copies look fairly unfinished, but that wasn't the case here and it looked very professional.

This was as much a book about the relationship between a mother and daughter as it was a devastating reflection on the bombing on Nagasaki during WWII. The first part of the book (and several chapters throughout as well) are difficult to get through while Amaterasu recalls desperately searching for her grandson and daughter after the atomic bomb. The descriptions of the bodies of both the dead and the survivors were, at times, almost too much for me and I would have to take a break from the book.

After all their losses Amaterasu and her husband Kenzo decide to leave Japan, the place of too many memories and move out to California. However, despite the distance between California and Japan, sharing the Pacific Ocean with Japan is too much of a connection and they settle in Philadelphia where decades later a man shows up on her doorstep claiming to be her grandson.

From there we do much flip flopping to the past and back to the present through memories and letters Hideo brings with him. Letters he hasn't read himself, but come from his adoptive parents. The characters were rich and the story was twisted around itself so much that I felt a little lost at times trying to remember where (in time) she was at and who she was talking to/about.

There is so much regret here and so much pain. It was a hard time to read a book about a Bachan when I just lost mine, but the similarities between Amaterasu and my Bachan were very few. Even though the book is bleak and melancholy it ends with hope for second chances and forgiveness so you're not left feeling like a grey cloud is hovering over you.