Suggested in the Stars

De: Yoko Tawada

Narrado por: Alice Wen

On the heels of Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada’s new and irresistible Suggested in the Stars carries on her band of friends’ astonishing and intrepid adventures

It’s hard to believe there could be a more enjoyable novel than Scattered All Over the Earth—Yoko Tawada’s rollicking, touching, cheerfully dystopian novel about friendship and climate change—but surprising her readers/listeners is what Tawada does best: its sequel, Suggested in the Stars, delivers exploits even more poignant and shambolic.

As Hiruko—whose Land of Sushi has vanished into the sea and who is still searching for someone who speaks her mother tongue—and her new friends travel onward, they begin opening up to one another in new and extraordinary ways. They try to help their friend Susanoo regain his voice, both for his own good and so he can speak with Hiruko—and amid many often hilarious misunderstandings (some linguistic in nature)—they empower each other against despair.

Coping with carbon footprint worries but looping singly and in pairs, they hitchhike, take late-night motorcycle rides, and hop on the train (learning about railway strikes but also packed-train-yoga) to convene in Copenhagen. There they find Susanoo in a strange hospital working with a scary speech-loss doctor. In the half-basement of this weird medical center, they also find two special kids washing dishes. They discover magic radios, personality swaps, ship tickets delivered by a robot, and other gifts. But friendship—loaning one another the nerve and heart to keep going—sets them all (and the listener) to dreaming of something more... Suggested in the Stars delivers new delights, and Yoko Tawada’s famed new trilogy will conclude in 2025 with Archipelago of the Sun, even if nobody will ever want this “strange, exquisite” (The New Yorker) trip to end.

©2020, 2024 Yoko Tawada; Margaret Mitsutani (P)2025 New Directions Publishing Corp.

Flop

This novel is misguided. Unlike the first book in the series which had intrigue and mystery and a kind of unlocking of ideas around language, this book falls flat. I did stick suffer through to the end of the book- as I am a completionist at heart.

The author repeatedly seems to assert that she is engaged with the concept of language, but never gives the reader enough detail to have a foothold to know or care much about the various languages presented and ideated in the book.

Each chapter, narrated by a different character, does little to create a world or plot. Each instead offers up rather prolonged monologues without much development or even description. As a result the characters themselves all seem exceptionally two dimensional, simply props for the author to vaguely present some sort of linguistic concept, though those concepts are never clear. The characters thought processes often circular and simply uninteresting.

What’s more there is a continued misgendering of a trans character in the book which is not only upsetting, but seems to discredit any authority the author might have on language itself.

And to add insult to injury, the narrator of the audiobook mispronounces a number of words, clearly unintentionally, while also making very unfortunate choices included poor accents … it’s very cringey- and makes the book rather insufferable.

After the first book in the series, I had been curious to follow the intellectual threads about language learning the author had initially put forward in a science fiction world, but I won’t be following these characters further. What a disappointment.