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"I hope that [readers'] curiosity is piqued for the Japan that is not sleek and urban, not the exclusive world of geisha and samurai." The words of first-time novelist Holly Thompson set the tone for her exquisite book, ASH. When a young woman returns to the Japanese town where she grew up and is confronted by both the depressing conditions of the town, thanks to the active volcano that sits high above it and the ash it strews all over everything, she must face both her future and the past that has called her back. Filled with grief, struggling again with a loss that nearly destroyed her as a child, Caitlin Ober rambles through her teaching position --- swimming to escape, hanging with a group of windsurfers to pass the time, putting a firewall between her boyfriend and her passion. ASH is the story of a summer that brings her face to face with a version of her lost friend, a half-Japanese teen who seems lost between two identities. Under the significant and raucous festival of O-Bon, in which the spirits of the dead come back to visit the living, Caitlin finds herself stepping out of her old clothes and slipping tentatively into a whole new outlook on life.
Thompson doesn't do anything fancy with her language, and for that we can be thankful. In fact, her storytelling is so straightforward that you would expect it to be emotionless. Yet, at every turn, you will be surprised by the depth and breadth of her heart, her ability to create characters (particularly Naomi, the lost teen) that will stay with you and compel you through the rest of the story. The endless details about Japanese life (the food, clothing, customs of the people with whom Caitlin lives in Kagoshima) almost bog down the narrative but, thanks to the painstakingly rendered relationship between the woman searching for a future she can take hold of with happiness and the teen whose dual identity stunts her in every way, these details end up serving a significant purpose. Like a cinematic close-up, they provide the rich and textured backdrop against which this story sits. And the volcano, always brewing in the background, scattering its waste about the town like dust on a city windowsill, maintains an important position in the story: we keep waiting for Caitlin's world to blow, and when it does, the ash cannot cover the exceptional strides she has made into the rest of her life.
The friendship of the young women is a deep and moving one. Caitlin's hardscrabble emotional existence with her boyfriend is not quite as compelling --- you keep wanting to tell her to push ahead, but she is so reticent. Like you would with your own best friend, you want to protect and also to help liberate Caitlin from her demons. As the story moves on, you will find yourself wishing more and more for Caitlin to become the person it is clear she wishes to be. ASH covers each of its subjects with thick and pungent layers through which to discover and discern the heroine's personal journey, a labor-intensive struggle in some books, but ASH is worth all the trouble --- it is a paean to friendship and to the courage of moving forward, which rings particularly loudly in these dark times.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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