Chiyo Uno
Pushkin Press
27 March 2025
160
eBook - PDF
Modern Classic
ARC via Edelweiss
As an older woman, Kazue looks back on her tumultuous younger years with piercing clarity. Growing up in a tiny Japanese mountain village at the start of the twentieth century, her life was shadowed by the demands and expectations of her troubled, alcoholic father. While she is still a young teenager, her family arranges for her to marry an older cousin; Kazue stays with the boy for only ten days before returning home alone.
This is the beginning of a life of questing independence, which will see Kazue forced to leave her home at eighteen following a love affair, going first to Korea and then to Tokyo. Driven by her impulses and an indomitable spirit of hope, Kazue moves from one relationship to another, hungry for experience. As her sense of identity and voice grows, she takes to writing as a means to live a life on her own terms.
Candidly told and full of stunning imagery, The Story of a Single Woman is an autobiographical novel by one of Japan’s most significant 20th-century writers, a trailblazer who lived and wrote like no-one else.
The Story of a Single Woman was interesting in large part due to its semi-autobiographical nature. It was fascinating to follow Kazue as she navigated various relationships and chose to defy the boundaries society wanted to force upon her. This is a fairly fast moving piece, though, and that's where it fell down a little for me. Due to the short length and speed of the narration it was hard to form any emotional ties to the characters, with feelings and motivations quickly glossed over. I would have liked to have read it not as a novella but rather as a novel, where we could delve more deeply into the events that took place. Nonetheless, in its current form it was still a good read that shone light on a woman ahead of her time in terms of her views on relationships and her willingness to test societal expectations. I am giving it four stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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