Goenawan, Clarissa
WORK TITLE: Rainbirds
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1988
WEBSITE: http://clarissagoenawan.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Singapore
NATIONALITY: Singapore
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | n 2017069110 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017069110 |
| HEADING: | Goenawan, Clarissa, 1988- |
| 000 | 00619cz a2200133n 450 |
| 001 | 10609252 |
| 005 | 20171117102947.0 |
| 008 | 171117n| azannaabn |n aaa |
| 010 | __ |a n 2017069110 |
| 040 | __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |
| 046 | __ |f 1988-04-18 |2 edtf |
| 053 | _0 |a PR9570.S53 |b G672 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Goenawan, Clarissa, |d 1988- |
| 670 | __ |a Rainbirds, 2018: |b CIP t.p. (Clarissa Goenawan) data view (“birth date: 4/18/1988; Clarissa Goenawan is an Indonesian-born Singaporean writer. Her award-winning short fiction has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Singapore, Australia, the UK, and the US. Rainbirds is her first novel”) |
PERSONAL
Born April 18, 1988, Surabaya, Indonesia; children: two.
ADDRESS
- Home - Singapore.
- Agent - Maria Cardona, Pontas Copyright Agency, S.L., Sèneca, 31 E-08006 Barcelona, Spain.
CAREER
Writer and novelist. Previously worked in marketing, sales, and banking.
AWARDS:Bath Novel Award, 2015, for Rainbirds.
WRITINGS
- Rainbirds, Soho Press (New York, NY), 2018
Contributor to literary magazines and anthologies in Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including MacGuffin, Your Impossible Voice, Esquire, Monsoon Book, Writing the City, and Needle in the Hay.
SIDELIGHTS
Indonesian-born Singaporean writer Clarissa Goenawan is a contributor to literary magazines and anthologies. Goenawan enjoyed writing from a young age but eventually became immersed in her education. “I also became more ‘realistic’ and kind of abandoned the idea of becoming a writer,” Goenawan told an RT Book Reviews Online contributor. After working for several years, Goenawan became pregnant with her second child and took a sabbatical. At this time, she decided to give writing another chance. Goenawan noted in an interview for the 17 Scribes website that “finishing my first novel further convinced me that, ‘Yes, this is what I really, really want to do for the rest of my life.'”
In her debut novel, Rainbirds, Goenawan tells the story of a man named Ren Ishida whose sister, Keiko, is stabbed to death on a rainy night on her way home in the small town of Akakawa, Japan. Ren heads off to Akakawa to settle his sister’s affairs but wonders why she left family and friends behind for this remote town so many years earlier. Commenting on where she got the idea for her novel, Goenawan remarked in the interview for the 17 Scribes website: “One day, I suddenly thought, ‘What if someone I care about suddenly passed away, and then, I realized—too late—that I never actually got to know them?’”
Once Ren arrives in Akakawa, he begins to inhabit the life of his late sister, taking on her teaching appointment at a specialized cram school. He also follows in his sister’s footsteps by taking up free lodging offered by a politician. The only payment is that Ren is to read to the politician’s catatonic wife. Ren, however, cannot get over the death of a sister he admired to the point that he obsessed over her love life instead of pursuing one for himself.
It turns out that Ren has been following Keiko’s path even before he came to Akakawa, studying literature and wanting to become a teacher just like his sister. As the novel progresses, Ren becomes acquainted with a wide range of people in the fictional town. He also slowly uncovers more and more information about his sister. Meanwhile, Ren forms a close friendship with a student, which becomes problematic, especially when he discovers that there may be a connection between the female student and his sister’s past. Eventually, Ren realizes he is coming close to solving why his sister was murdered, which may have had something to do with disturbing family secrets.
Rainbirds “balances a finely wrought plot with patient, measured portraits of fragile relationships, making for a spare yet inviting novel,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Karen Keefe, writing for Booklist, remarked: The “character-driven focus and introspective tone will attract literary-fiction readers.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2018, Karen Keefe, review of Rainbirds, p. 48.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2017, review of Rainbirds.
Publishers Weekly, January 29, 2018, review of Rainbirds, p. 162.
ONLINE
Asian Review of Books, http://asianreviewofbooks.com/ (February 27, 2018), Rosie Milne, review of Rainbirds.
Big Thrill, http://www.thebigthrill.org/ (February 28, 2018), Charles Salzberg, review of Rainbirds.
Clarissa Goenawan Website, http://clarissagoenawan.com (June 25, 2018).
Japan Times, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ (April 28, 2018), Suzanne Kamata, “Clarissa Goenawan’s ‘Rainbirds’: A Murder, a Cram School, a Mystery.”
Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/ (March 26, 2018), Jung Yun, “Inheriting a Life,” review of Rainbirds.
Nerd Daily, http://www.thenerddaily.com/ (March 6, 2018), Lindsey Williams, review of Rainbirds.
Pontus Agency Website, http://www.pontas-agency.com/ (June 25, 2018), brief author profile.
RT Book Reviews Online, https://www.rtbookreviews.com/ (February 22, 2018), “Debut Author Spotlight: Clarissa Goenawan,” author interview.
17 Scribes, http://17scribes.com/ (September 8, 2017), Kate Brandes, “Interview with Clarissa Goenawan, Author of Rainbirds.”
- Rainbirds Soho Press (New York, NY), 2018
- Pontas Agency - http://www.pontas-agency.com/clarissa-goenawan/
Clarissa Goenawan
Clarissa Goenawan is an Indonesian-born Singaporean writer. She is the winner of the 2015 Bath Novel Award. Her short stories have won several awards and been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. She loves rainy days, pretty books, and hot green tea.
Goenawan, Clarissa: RAINBIRDS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Goenawan, Clarissa RAINBIRDS Soho (Adult Fiction) $25.00 3, 6 ISBN: 978-1-61695-855-8
When a Japanese graduate student's sister is violently murdered in a small town in rural Japan, he abandons his life and steps into her shoes to come to terms with her death.
Ren Ishida has always admired his sister, Keiko, from afar. He grew up obsessing over her love life despite never having much of his own. He pursued the same major as her at university--a study of British and American literature--with ambitions of becoming a teacher, just like her. But when Keiko is stabbed to death on the street in the small town she calls home, Ren is so guilt- ridden and grief-stricken that he travels to her town under the pretense of obtaining her ashes and finalizing her affairs but ends up moving into her home and replacing her as an English teacher at the local high school. Over the course of Ren's spiritual reconnection with his sister, he unwittingly uncovers the mystery behind her murder and unearths shocking family secrets in the process. Goenawan's debut proves to be a slow, soulful whodunit full of deadpan humor and whimsical narrative unpredictability in an attempt at a Murakami-esque aesthetic. Ren's barren, unreliable narration can be as hilarious as it is sad, and an interesting cast of characters--a girl in his class nicknamed Seven Stars, with whom he forms a taboo romantic entanglement that torments him; his friend and fellow teacher, Honda--gives the novel a voice and world of its own. Goenawan unfortunately struggles with transitions between present action and flashback, and the novel falls victim to plot holes and linguistic clichA@s (an underage Seven Stars to Ren, while wearing her schoolgirl uniform: "Didn't you say age was only a number?").
A witty, well-constructed debut that manages to overcome moments of clichA@.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Goenawan, Clarissa: RAINBIRDS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461530/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=786ad00c. Accessed 20 May 2018.
1 of 4 5/20/18, 4:10 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461530
2 of 4 5/20/18, 4:10 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Rainbirds
Publishers Weekly.
265.5 (Jan. 29, 2018): p162+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Rainbirds
Clarissa Goenawan. Soho, $25 (336p) ISBN 978-1-61695-855-8
Goenawan's well-paced mystery follows ruminative Japanese graduate student Ren Ishida as he returns to the town where his sister was murdered. When Keiko Ishida was found dead in the small town Akakawa, she had sustained stab wounds, had tie marks on her wrists, and was lying alongside a bloody kitchen knife--but nothing was missing from her purse and there's no known motive. She was also carrying a pack of birth control pills, though she'd been tight-lipped about her romantic life and never mentioned a boyfriend. Ren plans to stay just long enough to collect his sister's belongings, but is drawn into the town's morass when he temporarily takes over his sister's old teaching post at a cram school and agrees to fill her room in a politician's graveyard- quiet mansion (where he reads Rushdie to the politician's silent wife, Ms. Katou, in exchange for lodging). As Ren becomes invested in Ms. Katou's (and other townspeople's) backstories, he's also drawn into a beguiling friendship with one of his students--whom he nicknames "Seven Stars" for the brand of cigarettes she smokes--which gets increasingly thorny as he realizes she may be connected to his sister's troubled past. Goenawan's debut balances a finely wrought plot with patient, measured portraits of fragile relationships, making for a spare yet inviting novel that grabs hold and doesn't let go. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rainbirds." Publishers Weekly, 29 Jan. 2018, p. 162+. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526116499/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=1dba26e5. Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526116499
3 of 4 5/20/18, 4:10 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Rainbirds
Karen Keefe
Booklist.
114.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2018): p48+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Rainbirds.
By Clarissa Goenawan.
Mar. 2018. 336p. Soho, $25 (9781616958558); e-book, $14.99(9781616958565).
Nearly finished with his graduate degree in English, Ren Ishida leaves Tokyo to retrieve his late sister's belongings from the small Japanese town where she had been teaching at a cram school. He is soon offered a job teaching her classes and the same rooming arrangement, where he could live in a wealthy man's house rent-free in exchange for reading to the owner's mute wife. At work, Ren becomes the object of a student's infatuation, a student who may hold the key to Ren's sister's death. Ren operates in a fog, moving between memories of his sister's struggle to protect him from their parents' constant fighting and neglect to the six-day work week that consumes nearly all of his time. Although it is his sister's seemingly random murder that initiates the action, this dreamlike novel is not a conventional murder mystery; its character-driven focus and introspective tone will attract literary-fiction readers.--Karen Keefe
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Keefe, Karen. "Rainbirds." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2018, p. 48+. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525185623/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=459e0e17. Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525185623
4 of 4 5/20/18, 4:10 PM
- The Nerd Daily
http://www.thenerddaily.com/review-rainbirds-clarissa-goenawan/
Word count: 860Review: Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan
Lindsey Williams March 6, 20181 0 comments
Rainbirds Clarissa Goenawan
I was not very far into Rainbirds, the debut novel by Clarissa Goenawan, when I realized that this book was something special. The story follows Ren Ishida, a graduate student from Tokyo who is nearing his degree, when he gets the news that his older sister, Keiko, has been murdered.
Ren travels alone to Akakawa, the small town in which his sister had lived in for the past several years, where he picks up the pieces of her life and struggles to find a way to fit them into his own. Initially intending his stay to last just a few days to speak with the police and collect Keiko’s things, Ren ends up falling into a series of strange and fortuitous events which extend his “visit” to a more permanent living situation. He takes up Keiko’s old teaching position, her old living arrangements, and finds himself falling in with her old coworkers and acquaintances.
Slowly, the pieces of Keiko’s life that she had never shared with Ren begin to unravel and expose themselves. Though Ren and Keiko spoke often on the phone prior to his death, and though he believed they were close, Ren begins to discover facets of his sister’s life that he had never seen before. As time progresses and the local police have still not found Keiko’s killer, Ren must follow the information from these discoveries and his own intuition in an attempt uncover his sister’s murderer.
The most striking thing about this novel is the atmosphere that Goenawan was able to masterfully create. Within the first few pages, I was immediately transported to this small town alongside Ren. The mood is incredibly well-crafted and thoughtful, leaving me with the subtle but haunting feeling of this small town and its residents resonating within me long after I set the book down. This book crept its way into me, in the very best way.
I also appreciated the book’s complex observations on grief, love, and loss. Though the plot follows what is technically a murder mystery, Rainbirds does not read like your average thriller. Told in a literary style with sparse and stunning prose, it is a slow-burning yet moving exploration of what losing a sibling, and at the same time finding out more about them than you ever considered, means for the life of those left behind. The sibling relationship felt authentic, and Ren’s struggle to discover what his life looks like without his sister was complex and kept me thoroughly engaged. I loved that as the story progressed, Ren not only received new glimpses into his sister’s life, but the reader received glimpses of Ren and Keiko’s childhoods together. These flashbacks helped frame the present-day plot in a beautiful way, and fleshed out the relationship between brother and sister beautifully.
Rainbirds also explores the complexities of family secrets, not just of Ren and Keiko’s family, but of the secondary characters in the novel as well. I always appreciate books that closely examine the inner-workings and veiled truths of families, and Rainbirds managed to do this in a way that was both lyrical and page-turning.
I read the majority of this stunning debut while on an overnight trip to a small town up north, huddled in bed while snow began to fall softly outside. While Rainbirds does take place over the course of a summer, the weather and mood felt fitting. This quiet, beautiful novel is not one to be missed – and if you get the chance, read it while on a trip to a small town.
Will you be picking up Rainbirds at your local bookstore or library? Let us know what you think in the comments below!Goodreads Synopsis
Ren Ishida is nearly finished with graduate school when he receives news of his sister Keiko’s sudden death. She was viciously stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Ren heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister’s affairs, still failing to understand why she chose to abandon the family and Tokyo for this desolate town years ago.
But Ren soon finds himself picking up where Keiko left off, accepting both her teaching position at a local cram school and the bizarre arrangement of free lodging at a wealthy politician’s mansion in exchange for reading to the man’s catatonic wife.
As he comes to know the figures in Akakawa, from the enigmatic politician to his fellow teachers and a rebellious, alluring student named Rio, Ren delves into his shared childhood with Keiko and what followed, trying to piece together what happened the night of her death. Haunted in his dreams by a young girl who is desperately trying to tell him something, Ren struggles to find solace in the void his sister has left behind.”
This title was provided for review by Soho Press.
- RT Book Reviews
https://www.rtbookreviews.com/blog/139923/debut-author-spotlight-clarissa-goenawan
Word count: 870Open
Skip to main contentLogin
RegisterBlog
Book Reviews
Top Picks
RT Awards
Reader ForumMystery
Debut Author Spotlight: Clarissa Goenawan
Thu, 02/22/2018 - 12:40pm — RT Book ReviewsClarissa GoenawanWe love discovering new author to love, so we are very excited to introduce to you Clarissa Goenawan! Her debut, Rainbirds, is out March 6. We wanted to hear all about the mystery, partly set in Tokyo, and Clarissa — read on to find out more!
Name: Clarissa Goenawan
Book: Rainbirds
Genre: Literary mystery with elements of magical realism
Series: Rainbirds is a stand-alone novel, but it is also the first in a series of interrelated novels. Each of the novels will have different stories and different main characters, but all of them are set in the same universe. The characters from one novel will make appearances in the others.
Current Home: Singapore
Author Idol: Haruki Murakami
Favorite Word: lol (Technically, this is an abbreviation, but let’s just count it as one word for argument’s sake. I use ‘lol’ a lot in text messages, especially on Twitter. But never in novels lol)
Was this the first full-length novel you ever wrote? Yes.
Tell us about your day job. I’m a full-time writer.
In your opinion, what is the most interesting recent scientific discovery? Last year when I was in Tokyo, I saw robots working in some shops. The technology is getting more and more advanced. It’s no surprise some people are worried that one day their professions will be taken over by robots. As a writer, I’d never thought that my job might be affected, so I was very surprised when I read the news about a Japanese AI program which wrote a novel and nearly won a national literary award.
How did you start writing? Ever since I was still a child, I’d always enjoyed writing. However, as I grew up, I got more and more preoccupied with the mounting academic work. I also became more ‘realistic’ and kind of abandoned the idea of becoming a writer. I spent several years working in marketing, sales and banking. When I got pregnant with my second child, I decided to take a sabbatical. And since I was going to stay at home, I thought I should give myself one last chance to pursue my childhood dream.
What was it like when you got "The Call"? For me, it wasn’t “The Call”. It was “The Email”. I live in Singapore and the first offer came from the UK. It was also pretty straight-forward. Something along the lines of, “I love your book and I’d like to represent you.” I thought the agent would ask some questions first, and then we would have some discussion before they decided whether to give an offer of representation. Subsequently, I received a few more offers, including one from Barcelona-based Pontas Agency, who now represents me.
How did you come up with the setting from your book? Does it draw from any real places you've been to/lived in? Though a portion Rainbirds takes place in Tokyo, the story is set mainly in Akakawa, a fictional Japanese suburb. Akakawa is loosely based on Malang, a lovely city in East Java famed for its mild highland climate. I was born and raised in Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia. Malang is about a two to three-hour drive from Surabaya, so my family often travelled there for the weekend to enjoy the good weather.
Rainbirds will be available in digital and print on March 6. Digital copies start at $14.99, grab yours here: Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo. You can also get to know more debut authors here.
*This post contains affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and purchase an item from the vendor, we receive a percentage of the profit (even if you don't buy the item we've linked to). Thank you for supporting RT Book Reviews!
Genre:
Mystery
Tags:
Debut Author SpotlightRelated Posts
Debut Author Spotlight: Ausma Zehanat Khan
Debut Author Spotlight: Ruth WareDebut Author Spotlight: Kristen Lepionka
CommentsRT VIP Salon
Members receive ALL the content they love and expect in RT — 200+ Advanced Reviews and Ratings, Articles, Publishers Previews, Book Giveaways — and so much more!
ONE YEAR MEMBERSHIP $9.99
MEMBER LOGIN | BECOME A MEMBER
Recent Book Reviews
Image of Breathless
BREATHLESS by Celeste Bradley, Susan Donovan
Image of The Princess (Montagues)
THE PRINCESS by Elizabeth Elliott
Image of Find You in the Dark: A Novel
FIND YOU IN THE DARK by Nathan Ripley
Image of The Privilege of Peace (Peacekeeper)
THE PRIVILEGE OF PEACE by Tanya Huff
Image of Crime & Punctuation (Deadly Edits)
CRIME AND PUNCTUATION by Kaitlyn Dunnett
More Book ReviewsRT Book Reviews © 2009 - 2018. All rights reserved.
- The Big Thrill
http://www.thebigthrill.org/2018/02/rainbirds-by-clarissa-goenawan/
Word count: 1227Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan
February 28, 2018 by ITWBy Charles Salzberg
Five years is a long time, even longer if you think of it in dog years. For Clarissa Goenawan, that’s how long it took from the conception of her exquisite debut, RAINBIRDS, to publication. And some of that time was actually spent writing it.
If you’re looking for a straight suspense thriller, with murder, mayhem, car chases, stuff blowing up and the world as we know it at stake, RAINBIRDS is probably not for you. But if you’re in the market for an intelligent, well-written, thought-provoking novel, what Goenawan calls “a literary mystery with an element of magical realism set in Japan, a coming-of-age story masquerading as a murder mystery,” then RAINBIRDS is right up your alley.
RAINBIRDS doesn’t read like a first novel. You know the kind: precious and derivative. Instead, it appears to have sprung forth from a talented writer who’s been around longer than 29 years—“I’m turning 30 this year (gasp), but until my birthday in April, I’m going to insist I’m in my twenties”—and who’s carefully developed a plot and characters that grab you from the get-go and don’t let go.
The story is set in motion with the murder of a young woman, Keiko, the older sister of Ren, who visits the fictional small town of Akakawa (inspired by one of the suburban cities in Indonesia Goenawan visited as a child), where his sister moved years earlier to teach. While mourning her death, Ren hopes to find out who murdered her and why, but instead finds what he really wants is to get closer to his late sibling.
The novel is set in the mid ‘90s, for a reason. “I prefer the simpler life before almost everyone had cell phones,” says Goenawan. “People simply turned up on time for their appointments. They had proper conversations during lunches; they actually looked at and talked to one another. I guess I miss those days.”
Clarissa Goenawan was born and raised in Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia. She migrated to Singapore, where she is currently based, when she was sixteen. Although RAINBIRDS, winner of the 2015 Bath Novel Award, is her first, her short stories have won several awards and have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies.
Though trained in visual communications and marketing, she’s wanted to be a writer since she was a child. “Becoming a writer is my childhood dream,” she says. Toward that end, she studied novel writing with Curtis Brown Creative, a London-based writing school run by the literary agency.
Prior to writing full-time, Goenawan worked a couple years in marketing, sales and banking. “I even did marketing for a book distribution company. The best perks of that job were getting my hands on the ARCs and the staff discount. I used to buy boxes of books, using up my entire quota and then asking my colleagues to let me use theirs.”
She’s been inspired by many writers, but narrows it down to her top five. “I admire J.M. Coetzee for his clean and lean prose. Deborah Levy for her brilliant writing. Haruki Murakami for his whimsical stories. Banana Yoshimoto for her atmospheric narrative. And Stephen King for his discipline and dedication to the writing life. I recommend his On Writing to all aspiring writers.”
“RAINBIRDS was my NaNoWriMo novel,” she says. “I spent a year and a half writing the first draft, and half a year editing it. Querying and finding a publisher took more than a year, and then the publishing process was around two years.”
The idea for the novel came to her as it comes to so many writers: with a question. “I asked myself, what if someone I cared about passed away unexpectedly, and I realize too late I never got to know that person? At first, the plan was to write a story about a young man who lost an older brother who lived apart from him and hid some sort of terrible secret. Later on, the quiet brother morphed into an elegant sister. I got more and more ideas and told myself, ‘Hey, this is not a short story. This has to be a novel.’”
Goenawan has chosen to tell the story from a male point-of-view and, at least as far as this male is concerned, she nails it.
When asked why she made this choice, she says, “That’s a very interesting question, but I don’t have an exact answer for it. The choice to use a male POV wasn’t a conscious decision, but rather, what I felt was right for the kind of story I want to tell. Ever since the idea came to me, the main character has always been a young man. I did make some minor adjustments on the text after a few male readers from my writing group commented that men, in general, are more decisive and less perceptive compared to women. I have to emphasize the words ‘in general’, because there’s always a danger of stereotyping. All individuals are unique. There are plenty of sensitive men and strong-minded women around. Interestingly, I have a number of friends telling me, ‘Clarissa, do you know that you think like a guy?’”
She did not set the novel in her native Indonesia. “I wanted to set the story in an Asian country with a variety of backdrops—mountains, lakes, etc.—with four seasons. I’d studied the Japanese language in high school and was part of a Japanese cultural club, so Japan was an obvious choice.”
She adds a “not-so-secret confession. I’m a huge fan of manga (Japanese comics). It’s my guilty pleasure. I read way more manga than I’m willing to admit.”
Once she chose what to write about and where it was to be set, she did “a lot of Google searches and library visits. One of the highlights was when I once pulled out the historical record of the weather and moon phase in 1994 Japan. That being said, it’s also important to know where to stop. Most of my research materials never made it into the novel.”
Goenawan is working on her second and third novels. “Both are literary mysteries,” she says, “and just like RAINBIRDS, they’re set in Japan.”
“All my novels are interrelated,” she says. “They’re standalones—they have different stories and different main characters—but they’re set in the same universe. You’ll find characters in RAINBIRDS making appearances in the next novels. For those who’ve read RAINBIRDS, I hope you’ll have fun guessing which characters will become the main characters in the other novels.”
*****
Clarissa Goenawan is an Indonesian-born Singaporean writer. Her debut novel, RAINBIRDS, is the winner of the 2015 Bath Novel Award. Her short stories have won several awards and been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. She loves rainy days, pretty books, and hot green tea.
To learn more about Clarissa, please visit her website.
- 17 Scribes
http://17scribes.com/2017/09/08/interview-with-clarissa-goenawan-author-of-rainbirds/
Word count: 688Interview with Clarissa Goenawan, Author of Rainbirds
Today we’re thrilled to be talking with Clarissa Goenawan about her new novel, Rainbirds.
Please describe what the book is about.
Ren Ishida is nearly done with graduate school when he receives news of his sister’s murder. He heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister’s affairs, failing to understand why she chose to abandon their family and leave Tokyo for this small town in the first place. But Ren soon finds himself picking up right where Keiko left off, accepting both her teaching position at a cram school and the bizarre arrangement of free lodging at the wealthy Mr. Katou’s mansion, in exchange for reading aloud each morning to Katou’s depressed, mute wife. As Ren gets to know the figures in the town, from the mysterious Katou to fellow teachers and a rebellious, alluring student named Rio, he replays memories of his childhood with Keiko and finds his dreams haunted by a young girl with pigtails who is desperately trying to tell him something.
Share a teaser sentence or two from your novel.
“A hand model?” I’d never heard of that, but an image flashed into my mind of Seven Stars, holding a cigarette with her beautiful fingers, looking vacantly at the rain.
What do you want people to know about your book?
If you love complicated and flawed characters, dark family secrets, or stories set in Japan, you might enjoy Rainbirds.
What did you learn about yourself while writing this novel?
I always wanted to be a writer since I was young, and finishing my first novel further convinced me that, “Yes, this is what I really, really want to do for the rest of my life.”
What was your timeline from drafting to publication?
First draft : 1,5 months – mainly during NaNoWriMo
Editing: 1,5 years
Submission to agents : about half year
Submission to publishers : about half year
Preparation for publication: almost two years
Total: about five years. Whew!What is your favorite part of writing (drafting characters, making up scenes, plotting, developing emotional turning points, etc). Why?
I love both drafting and editing. During the first draft, my characters often lead me to unexpected places. The various stages of editing give me focus and direction to clarify what kind of story I really want to tell.
Briefly, where did the idea for your book come from?
One day, I suddenly thought, “What if someone I care about suddenly passed away, and then, I realized—too late—that I never actually got to know them?”
When do you do your best thinking about your work in progress?
When corresponding with my critique partners. We often brainstorm together, bouncing around ideas about our current WIPs. A lot of things we come up with might be unusable, but usually, we’ll find a perfect solution sooner or later.
Share something people may be surprised to know about you?
My main characters are usually coffee drinkers, but I don’t drink coffee. I prefer tea, and always have a variety of them at home to suit different moods.
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
Read a lot, and write a lot. Really, there’s no shortcut.
What’s next?
I’m currently editing my second and third novels (both of them are literary mysteries) and gathering ideas for my fourth novel (psychological suspense). All of them, just like Rainbirds, are set in Japan.
Preorder Links | Website
“Luminous, sinister, and page-turning all at once. I loved it.”
—Kate Hamer, internationally bestselling author of The Girl in the Red Coat and The Doll FuneralCategory: Uncategorized
← Interview with Alexis Daria, author of Take the Lead
Interview with Rachel Magee, Author of Happily Ever Afters → - Los Angeles Review of Books
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/inheriting-a-life/
Word count: 1715Inheriting a Life
By Jung Yun
MARCH 26, 2018
MY FATHER GREW UP in Pusan, South Korea, during the Japanese occupation. As was the case with many Koreans of his generation, living under colonial rule left him with some lingering resentments toward the Japanese, so much so that when I went to college and majored in Asian Studies, he questioned why I only seemed to bring home books by Japanese authors.
“What about the Koreans?” he’d ask. “Where are all the Koreans?”
At the time, English translations of Kōbō Abe, Yasunari Kawabata, Haruki Murakami, and Banana Yoshimoto were simply easier to find in the United States than English translations of Korean authors, for whom there was less demand. But beyond the practical matter of availability, I also found myself deeply intrigued by the strange characters, surrealist nods, and recurring themes of emotional and geographic isolation rendered in these Japanese authors’ works — the same qualities that drew me to Clarissa Goenawan’s atmospheric debut novel, Rainbirds.
Rainbirds opens shortly after the brutal stabbing death of 33-year-old Keiko Ishida, an English-language teacher living in a small Japanese town named Akakawa. Her younger brother, Ren, travels to Akakawa with the intention of quickly settling her affairs and returning home to Tokyo. But while collecting her belongings at the cram school where she worked, Ren stumbles into a temporary teaching job, effectively replacing his dead sister on the school’s faculty. If the prospect of this seems far-fetched, there’s more coincidence to come. After Ren visits the room that Keiko rented from Kosugi Katou, a shadowy local politician, Mr. Katou offers Ren a free place to stay in exchange for some minor caretaking duties for his invalid wife, Haruna, who doesn’t speak or leave her bedroom due to a past trauma. The only catch? Ren has to live in the same room that Keiko once occupied.
If inheriting his sister’s past life disturbs Ren, he doesn’t fully seem to register it at first. Upon moving into the Katous’ home, he clears a shelf in a wardrobe and places the urn with Keiko’s ashes inside, eerily whispering, “Welcome back to your room.” Soon, however, Ren’s dreams begin to unsettle him in a way that his common sense initially didn’t. In several vividly described dream sequences, he sees recurring images of a little girl with pigtails, a school of giant goldfish, black birds frozen in midair, and a gathering of men in dark suits. He also hears his late sister’s voice, calling out to him with an ominous warning: “Ren, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Here” is a rain-soaked small town where very little happens and newcomers are quick to stand out. Goenawan is at her best when she’s world-building, creating a place that is as sinister as it is sleepy. Ren’s scan of a local newspaper reveals:
Two masked men on a motorbike had stolen a purse, but the owner reported that the only thing inside was a bible. An article on road safety, and another one about the opening of a shopping mall. Nothing memorable. As the detective had said, Akakawa was a safe town.
Despite the detective’s assurances, Ren knows that someone murdered his sister in Akakawa, viciously stabbing her during one of the rainy season’s many storms and leaving her to bleed out in the street. The cast of possible suspects that surrounds him is large. In addition to both of the Katous, there’s Keiko’s troubled former student, Rio Nakajima, whom Ren refers to as “Seven Stars” because of the brand of cigarettes she smokes; the too-good-to-be-true Honda, a fellow teacher at the cram school who withholds the fact that he and Keiko once dated; the beautiful Anzu, a model who repeatedly implies that she knows Ren from a previous encounter that he can’t remember; the “Kimono Lady,” Natsumi Katsuragi, who runs the near-empty and allegedly cursed Katsuragi Hotel; and many others.
Although mysterious characters seem to lurk in every corner of Akakawa, Ren is arguably the most curious of them all. At 24, he’s just finished his graduate studies at the prestigious Keio University, following in his sister’s footsteps right down to the same field of study, yet he still seems ill prepared to “adult.” He’s listless and unmotivated, unable to commit to his long-suffering girlfriend back in Tokyo, guilty of cheating on her with multiple women, and slow to even alert her to his whereabouts after moving to Akakawa. He wanders through life with little sense of agency or urgency, and occasionally responds to stress by letting his mind and body detach, as they do when he receives an anonymous envelope containing his sister’s medical records and a bombshell revelation:
Soon, I found myself standing in front of another me, the physical me, who had lost his spirit. The man sitting on the floor holding the photocopies had empty eyes. The shell of me was disturbed by the content of the medical documents, yet he remained in a daze. He read the photocopies again and again, without even a hint of expression.
I shook him. “You need to show these to the police.”
He stared at me.
Rainbirds employs frequent flashbacks to demonstrate Ren’s closeness to his sister as a child and how he clung to her due to the emotional and sometimes physical absence of their parents. But the act of stepping into Keiko’s life not only heightens his sense of nostalgia, but it also exacerbates his grief. Ren realizes how distant they’d allowed themselves to become over time, not sharing the important details of their lives or even seeing each other during the seven years before her death. When the police detective suggests that Keiko was involved with a man, Ren is quick to deny it since she never mentioned a boyfriend during their weekly phone conversations. However, the birth-control pills in her bag, a scarf with her eyelash on it, and old marks on her wrists from being tied up with rope suggest otherwise, possibly something involving sadomasochism or bondage, which is difficult for him to imagine. Even stranger is the lovestruck handwritten note that Ren finds in her room, confirming that Keiko had developed feelings for someone during her time in Akakawa, but chose not to tell him.
Love comes when you least expect it. That’s why people call it falling in love. You cannot learn to fall, nor do you ever plan to. You just happen to fall.
It captures you like a pitcher plant, in a split second. There’s no room to think, let alone react. When you realize what has happened, you know there’s no way to escape. You’ve already fallen too deep.
Goenawan deftly draws the reader’s eye to a myriad of red herrings that ultimately have nothing to do with Keiko’s murder. And to the author’s great credit, the murderer is not someone whom readers are likely to suspect. However, the novel tends to over-rely on events and coincidences that seem to happen for no other reason than to advance the plot. The envelope of medical records is one example. Another example is when an old friend named Jin, who is about to be married, persuades Ren to return to Tokyo for one last bachelors’ weekend of sex, booze, and debauchery. It is during this long weekend that Ren has sex with Anzu, the model, who later calls and provides the key piece of information that leads him to the discovery of Keiko’s murderer.
Throughout Rainbirds, Goenawan constructs numerous parallels between the characters, the most significant being the one in which Ren falls into the life that Keiko lost. Another parallel involves Natsumi Katsuragi, the hotel owner, who fails to help her sister, just as Ren believes he failed to help his. Still another relates to Keiko and Ren’s father, who had an affair many years earlier that cost him deeply, much like Keiko. And then there is Ren’s involvement with the annoyingly infatuated 17-year-old Seven Stars, a parallel reversal of the affair that Keiko had with her married math teacher, Mr. Tsuda, when she was 17. This escalating flirtation with Seven Stars highlights the occasional awkwardness of the novel’s narration and dialogue.
I let her tongue slip into my mouth and touched her hair as she gave a sensual murmur. Hadn’t she told me she’d never had a boyfriend? But she was such a good kisser, I felt as if I was being dragged into a raging sea storm, with no chance of escape. I let the waves pull me down, deeper and deeper into pleasure.
Later in the same scene, after Ren realizes that he’s playing the role of Mr. Tsuda, he second-guesses himself and tries to break off physical contact with Seven Stars.
“We need to stop,” I said. I couldn’t look at her. “This isn’t right.”
“Are you afraid to admit your feelings?”
“Neither of us has real feelings for each other. It’s just lust. A universal biological need.”
By the time Keiko’s murderer is revealed and Ren learns the identity of the pigtailed girl who keeps appearing in his dreams, I felt certain of the influence of the Japanese writers whose work I so enjoyed during my early years of college. Throughout this novel, numerous moments pleasantly evoke the surrealism of Murakami, the nightmarish descriptions of Abe, the alienated youth of Yoshimoto, and the ill-fated lovers of Kawabata. But Rainbirds, suffice it to say, is a different beast, a contemporary work of noir that draws readers into an eerie landscape that is hard to forget and offers a surprising payoff for those who can look past its occasional failings to see the love story at its strange and lonely heart.
¤
Jung Yun is the author of Shelter.
- Asian Review of Books
http://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/rainbirds-by-clarissa-goenawan/
Word count: 859Rosie Milne 27 February 2018 Fiction, Reviews
“Rainbirds” by Clarissa Goenawan
Clarissa Goenawan Clarissa GoenawanIn 2015, Indonesian-born Singaporean author Clarissa Goenawan won the prestigious Bath Novel Award for unpublished and self-published novelists for her novel Rainbirds, which—some two years later—is now seeing the light of day.
Rainbirds is set in 1990s Japan. In the small, fictional town of Akakawa, Keiko Ishida has just been murdered. In Tokyo, her brother Ren, the narrator, drops everything, including, temporarily, his girlfriend, to rush to the scene. Keiko was older than Ren by 9 years; when he was a child, she was more a mother than a sister. Now, in some ways, Ren seems to slip into her life: he takes over both her job teaching English in a cram school, and her lodgings in the distinctly creepy Katou household: Mrs Katou is mentally ill and kept out of sight; Mr and Mrs Katou had a young daughter who died in mysterious circumstances.
While living in some ways as Keiko lived, Ren tries to make sense of aspects of his sister’s life that were previously hidden from him, and thereby, too, aspects of his own life currently mysterious to him. He is also keen to uncover the circumstances of the Katous’ daughter’s death, and, of course, to discover who killed his sister, and why.
Rainbirds, Clarissa Goenawan (Penguin RandomHouse, March 2018; Soho, March 2018)
Rainbirds, Clarissa Goenawan (Penguin RandomHouse, March 2018; Soho, March 2018)The complications and resolutions of these various plots and subplots, which intersect and converse with each other throughout the novel, could have been confusing, but Goenawan handles them with aplomb. In her hands, what could have been a conventional whodunit—who killed Keiko?—turns into a psychological study of adulterers, and adultery, as Ren struggles to understand himself, his sister, and their shared past. In combining elements of a fast-paced genre crime novel, with Ren’s quieter, slower reflection on his sister’s life, Goenawan offers a moving investigation of love, loss, and grief.
Goenawan emphasises Ren’s lack of sentimentality by giving him a voice which is cool and understated throughout. Some of his observations are dryly funny, so readers will crack a smile despite the grimness of some of Goenawan’s material.
Despite his restraint, Ren makes some arresting mental leaps:
The giant windows were adorned with thin lace curtains. They waved around as the wind blew, reminding me of goldfish tails.
Goldfish, not rainbirds, adorn the cover of Rainbirds, and they crop up again in a dream Ren has of a mysterious little girl with pigtails. Who is she? Keiko? The Katous’ dead daughter? Some other lost girl? Whoever she is, in Ren’s dream, the two of them stand beneath a school of goldfish swimming through air saturated with bubbles of water:
The flying goldfish danced above us, sweeping their translucent glittering tails while avoiding the balls of water. I was dazzled. They looked so elegant. Suddenly, the goldfish charged at the bubbles, bursting them. Cold water splashed everywhere, and a bright light flashed from the distance. I shielded my eyes with my hands. Squinting, I remembered the little girl and looked for her, but she’d run off.
This dream is one of many Ren recounts—the novel opens with him dreaming of his sister. Characters telling their dreams can be irritating in novels, but the way Goenawan moves between the reality of Ren’s dreams, and the reality of the physical world never feels forced, or manipulative.
An author who recounts dreams asks the reader to think about interpretation, explanation, and perception. Akakawa has a well-realised sense of place, and research into Japanese habits and lifestyle is never intrusive. Goenawan, as Ren, is good on culturally specific details. After Keiko’s funeral Ren comments: “I needed to shower to wash away the scent of the funeral incense.” Yet even the name of her fictional town emphasises her challenge to unitary explanation. “Aka” is from the Japanese for “red”, and “kawa” from the word for “river”. Ren learns the town got its name either from maple leaves falling into the local river, thus making the water look red, or else from blood making the river run red, after a brawl between two groups of farmers—the victorious group threw their slain enemies’ corpses into the river.
Goenawan’s Japanese setting, her first-person narrator, her reliance on realities other than the realities of the physical world, her use of strange coincidences and multiple plots, and her insistence there is rarely a single, easily-perceived interpretation of a story are for all appearances deliberate connections to Murakami, but Rainbirds does not feel derivative; whatever Goenawan’s reasons for paying homage to Japanese sensibility, Ren has his own, distinctive voice.
If the purpose of the Bath Prize is to catalyze publication of interesting novels, it has succeeded with Rainbirds.
Rosie Milne runs Asian Books Blog twitter@asianbooksblog. She lives in Singapore.
http://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/rainbirds-by-clarissa-goenawan/ - The Japan Times
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/04/28/books/book-reviews/clarissa-goenawans-rainbirds-murder-cram-school-mystery/
Word count: 307Clarissa Goenawan’s ‘Rainbirds’: A murder, a cram school, a mystery
by Suzanne KamataContributing Writer
Apr 28, 2018
Article historyIndonesian-born Clarissa Goenawan’s debut novel, “Rainbirds,” is set in Japan, was written in Singapore, and was first published in the U.S. (with foreign language rights sold in 10 countries and counting) making it something of a transnational literary tour de force.
Rainbirds, by Clarissa Goenawan.
336 pages
SOHO PRESS, Fiction.It starts with 20-something Ren Ishida traveling to the fictional town of Akakawa to pick up the cremains of his murdered sister, Keiko, and talk to the police. While there, he falls into a job teaching at the cram school where his sister had been employed and decides to hang out for a while to try to figure out what happened to Keiko.
Between the disaffected young male narrator, references to pasta and jazz, and occasional weirdness — Ren promises a girl he meets in a dream to find her in real life; another girl compulsively shoplifts bubble gum — there is a consistent suggestion that the author is paying homage to Haruki Murakami, and fans of his slightly off-kilter brand of fiction will find much to enjoy here.
Although the occasional small detail, such as omuraisu (omelette rice) for breakfast or the suggestion of throwing cremains into the sea, gave this reviewer pause for thought, cultural authenticity is beside the point. As in Murakami’s fiction, the setting is not really Japan, per se, but an imaginary parallel where anything can happen.
“Rainbirds” is a mystery, but not a nail-biter. Instead, secrets are revealed, surprises appear and tangled relationships are unraveled as the novel meanders toward its conclusion. Readers will be carried along by its creepy charm.