The Place of Shells

4.75 stars Literary translated fiction with elements of magical realism and mystery, foloows an unnamed Japanese doctorate doing her art history thesis in Germany during COVID. As she welcomes the ghost of a friend who disappeared in the 2011 Tohaku earthquake/tsunami tragedy, she starts to feel detached from the current time/space, overwhelmed by memories of her own experiences of 2011. 
What an incredible read this was ! It had an hypnotic, lush writing. Light on plot, it felt more like a gorgeous meditation on memories, history, iconography and iconology, symbolism, grief, trauma, art, death, objects as manifestations of a place or a person or a period. I particularly loved all the art history references.   The ending was abrupt and what lead to that felt repetitive but it felt like it paralleled the motif of the shelf so it made sense. 
There's a couple of elements that left me wanting more, and kept me from marking this a five stars (lacked something at the end, maybe some emotional impact I don't know), but I'm looking forward to read her future books.