" Fifty Words for Rain is a lovely, heartrending story about love and loss, prejudice and pain, and the sometimes dangerous, always durable ties that link a family together. A truly ambitious and remarkable debut." - Booklist "Lemmie's debut novel is a gripping historical tale that will transport readers through myriad emotions…Lemmie intimately draws the readers into every aspect of Noriko's complex story, leading us through the decades and across the continents this adventure spans, bringing us to anger, tears, and small pockets of joy. Sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeful, Lemmie's heartbreaking story of familial obligations packs an emotional wallop." - Publishers Weekly "Lemmie makes a few bewildering narrative choices.but she keeps the reader guessing and ends with a staggering gut punch. Unfortunately, Nori's own metamorphosis into a strong young woman is inconsistent and a bit confusing.A bold historical portrait of a woman overcoming oppression marred by inconsistent character development." - Kirkus Reviews "Lemmie's sweeping historical backdrop, from the post–World War II decline of minor royalty through the expanding liberations of the 1960s, is breathtaking. Spanning decades and continents, Fifty Words for Rain is a dazzling epic about the ties that bind, the ties that give you strength, and what it means to be free. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it-a battle that just might cost her everything. But when chance brings her older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him an unlikely ally with whom she forms a powerful bond-a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her skin. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents' imperial estate. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. Such is eight-year-old Noriko "Nori" Kamiza's first lesson. From debut author Asha Lemmie, a sweeping, heartrending coming-of-age novel about a young woman's quest for acceptance in post-World War II Japan.
0 kommentar(er)
