A Perfect Day to Be Alone, by Nanae Aoyama

A young woman trying to establish her independence spends a year with an older, distant relative. 

​Chizu is a twenty-year-old who finds her life at a crossroads. Her mother has taken up a job in China, and the expectation is that Chizu will go to university, but she has other ideas. Against her mother’s wishes, she decides to take up a string of part-time jobs and eke out a living independently. That’s not so easily done when you’re young, with the cost of living in Tokyo going through the roof. So Chizu’s mother organises for her to stay with a distant relative, the seventy-one-year-old Ginko. 

The two develop a rather rudimentary, if  ambivalent, relationship. Ginko goes to her dance classes and has a gentleman friend, who visits regularly. She cooks for Chizu and in her mild mannered way offers company and desultory conversation. For Chizu’s part, she’s going through a round of unsatisfactory boyfriends. She enters these relationships with low to zero expectations, and has them depressingly fulfilled. When her mother comes back from China, and the two try to catch up, the two women struggle to find anything in common. If anything, Chizu feels perhaps abandoned when her mother announces a Chinese man wants to marry her. Where will that leave Chizu? 

Nanae Aoyama is a young Japanese novelist. She has garnered an impressive slew of awards for her writing. A Perfect Day to Be Alone was originally published in 2007 and is now translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. While the subject matter of A Perfect Day to Be Alone sounds grim and arid, it’s actually a very engaging and often funny book, filled with uncannily realistic dialogue. Chizu has an appealing, self-deprecating style, admitting to meanness and duplicity (she’s a petty thief, hoarding bits of useless junk she’s pilfered). The novel’s chief charm is its intimacy and candidness. The reader becomes absorbed in Chizu’s world, and while we sometimes wonder about her reliability as a narrator (her view of the world is often skewered), these concerns are corrected by her willingness to show her worst side. In many ways, A Perfect Day to Be Alone is reminiscent of  the writings of Sally Rooney, another writer of vulnerability who quickly draws you into her world. There are even flashes of The Bell Jar’s Esther Greenwood in Chizu’s sassy sense of humour mixed with her sense of alienation.

A satisfying, cathartic experience. Let’s hope more of Nanae Aoyama’s books are translated into English. 

A Perfect Day to Be Alone, by Nanae Aoyama. Published by MacLehose Press. $22.99

JUN24