Anna Smaill’s second novel is an ornate exploration of grief, friendship and brilliance, which centres on four characters, two of whom are cast as ordinary and two as extraordinary. After the suicide of her twin brother, Michael, Dinah moves from New Zealand to Japan to teach English. Michael was a musical prodigy; aged 10, he played piano better than his teacher. By 13, he was also eloquent beyond his years: The Magic Flute, he explains to his sister, is “the best” because “there is nothing tragic in it. The tragedy has been burned off. Vaporised. Like sun on wet pavement.” For reasons that become clear only later on, Dinah had not seen Michael for a year before the day he died. In her new surroundings, Dinah feels guilty and lost, as though “everything were just a little bit out of sync with itself”.
She makes friends with Yasuko, an older colleague at the university. Drawing a parallel with Michael, Yasuko is described as “just too subtle, too perfect”. The novel is unsubtle about its love of Yasuko’s designer clothes and her collection of live beetles. In one set piece, Yasuko reveals her knowledge of translators of Cervantes into Japanese to a pet shop owner. In another, she shouts at an obnoxious homeless man on the commuter train, then tosses a handful of change on to the platform, so that he has to scramble after it. For Dinah, there is “something in Yasuko’s presence [that acts] like a necklace of protection”. Dinah recognises in Yasuko her own feelings of “emptiness and panic”.
