Rei, Kiki and Ai are three sisters whose lives have taken them on very different paths. They have lost both parents, one way or another, and each found their own ways of carrying on. Eldest daughter Rei is spiky and sensible, distracting herself with an all-consuming job at a financial corporation in London. Big-hearted Kiki is a single mother in Tokyo, juggling the demands of her young son and the cantankerous elderly residents of the care home she works in. And Ai, the free-spirited youngest, is a Japanese pop idol who has found fame and fortune but lost herself along the way.
When Ai is embroiled in a scandal and suddenly thrust into the spotlight, Rei must pick up the pieces of her family once more. Reunited for the summer in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters are forced to confront the legacy of their mother's death, the stories they have told themselves ever since and the question of how they want to live.
A transporting, funny and moving novel about love and loss, this new novel from the author of Fault Lines confirms Emily Itami as a talent to watch.
Rei, Kiki and Ai are three sisters whose lives have taken them on very different paths. They have lost both parents, one way or another, and found their own ways of carrying on. Eldest daughter Rei is spiky and sensible, distracting herself with an all-consuming job at a financial corporation in London. Big-hearted Kiki is a single mother in Tokyo, juggling the demands of her young son and the cantankerous elderly residents of the retirement home she works in. Ai, the free-spirited youngest, is a Japanese pop idol who has found fame and fortune but lost herself along the way.
When Ai is embroiled in a scandal and thrust into the spotlight, Rei must pick up the pieces of her family once more. Over the course of a summer in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters reunite with their sharp-tongued grandmother, entertain Kiki's irrepressible son and silently worry about Ai, carefully avoiding the subject of their mother's death fifteen years before. But silence between sisters can only last for so long . . .
Transporting, funny and moving, Kakigori Summer is an uplifting exploration of love and loss, sisterhood and family, the stories we tell ourselves about the past and how they determine our future.
