The so-called perfect life of a Japanese teenager is the focus of Clarissa Goenawan’s second novel, an offbeat, tender exploration of the secrets we keep from others.
The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida initially gives the impression that it might be about Instagram culture, a heavily manicured world of online profiles and their suggestions of flawless, faultless living. But Goenawan instead chooses to start her book in 1989, a time when people were less inclined to speak out about their stories or "their truths". It is interesting to get this glimpse of a fairly recent past whose culture – not just in Japan – made it difficult for victims or those on the outside to be part of the mainstream.
With its heavily ironic title, Goenawan's novel has echoes of Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Here the titular character goes to Waseda University in Tokyo, lives alone and seems oddly distant from her family despite professing to have "perfect" relationships with everyone. When her friends organise a group date – three boys, three girls – she behaves rudely to her intended, Ryusei. As the other couples hit it off, she rejects Ryusei, only befriending him because of a shared love of books and after he has given his (false) assurances that he has no interest in being her boyfriend.
Miwako is intriguingly different, a character who is brought to life by bright visual details but also by how she acts: “She was clumsy at painting and bought her clothes from the bargain basements in Shinjuku and disliked children … her sharp, stubborn voice and surprisingly unbridled laugh.”
These observations are delivered through the perspective of Ryusei. From the beginning of the book, Goenawan silences Miwako – aside from a small number of letters that exist as fodder to the central mystery – and chooses instead to give the narrative to three other characters who help the reader to slowly piece together the story of the tragic heroine.
The opening pages reveal that Miwako has killed herself and the book unfolds as a sort of whydunnit, with lovestruck Ryusei, his artist sister Fumi, and Miwako’s best friend Chie, all offering new twists and turns.
Anachronistic moments
Goenawan is an inventive writer who uses novel devices to propel her story. In Chie’s section, for example, the schoolgirl partakes in an e-zine competition where teenage girls across Japan write in with secret diary entries that are then ranked online. It’s a clever device – especially when girls start fictionalising entries to get ahead in the competition – but anachronistic for the supposed time frame of the novel. This is a factor elsewhere, as with the character of Fumi, whose transgender backstory seems to fit a more contemporary time.
Other downsides include a heavy hand with cliffhangers at the start and end of chapters: “A year after the first time I met Miwako, I attended her wake … It would only be her lifeless body, pale and cold to the touch.” There are also prose issues, with dialogue in particular. Unnaturalistic turns of phrase – “I’ll take my leave now” – couple with a few too many cliches (boys stealing glances, things slated for redevelopment, country bumpkins, knives thrust in hearts) and occasionally descriptions that lack sense: Chie had lived an “unremarkable life as a transparent girl”.
The comparisons to Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman in the publicity for this book are inflated. Goenawan, an Indonesian-born Singaporean writer, lacks the precision of her remarkable contemporary. But this is only Goenawan’s second novel – her debut, Rainbirds, won the 2015 Bath Novel Award and was shortlisted for three further prizes – and she is clearly a talented and creative storyteller.
Master of suspense
She excels at suspense, keeping the reader guessing with left-field plot developments and forays into magic realism that somehow seem in keeping with realities on the ground. Flourishes of Japanese culture – the goukon group date, kaiseki in a traditional Japanese restaurant, the way first names are only used by family members and very close friends – add another layer of interest for readers.
Character is the book’s biggest success. The central theme of damage is mined in various memorable ways with the different narrators. Chie’s loneliness and desire to fit in at school sees her literally write a supposedly better version of herself. Elsewhere, the intricate sibling bond between Ryusei and Fumi could work as a novel in its own right. They are orphaned after their parents are killed in a car accident, and older sister Fumi is left to educate her brother: “My sister says an orphanage is like a pet shop. The youngest puppies have the highest chance of being bought.”
Goenawan’s compassion for her characters is clear throughout the book. None of them lead perfect lives but all of them deserve to have their stories heard.
