Lonely Castle in the Mirror (英語)

Mizuki Tsujimura, Phillip Gabriel (translator)

This one will just be in English, though I'll write about this again in Japanese at some point.

今回は英語だけのポストをアップするけど、また時間のある時に同じ本について日本語で書いてみたいと思います😊 辻村深月・作家のかがみの孤城についてです。最近Phillip Gabrielが英訳した「Lonely Castle in the Mirror」を読んで、ぎゃあぎゃあ泣いた。なるべく早く、原書の日本語版も読みたいです。

I don’t often cry reading books, so when a book does make me cry I know it’s one I’ll come back to again and again. Mizuki Tsujimura’s Lonely Castle in the Mirror didn’t just make me cry, it made me sob and crawl back under the covers, and it’s been hard to pick up another book since.

You could sum it up by saying it’s about a quest for a magic key, or equally that it’s about seven teenagers who are struggling. Neither sounds like a book I’d usually buy. But I was drawn to Anna Morrison’s beautiful cover, and to the blurb which promised that ‘as time passes, they begin to realize only those brave enough to share their stories will be saved.’ Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m a big believer in the importance of sharing our stories, or having space to – whether that be with friends, in therapy, or through writing. I was recently talking to some friends about what roles we’ll each have when the time comes for us to defend ourselves in a zombie apocalypse, and apparently mine would be active listening and empathy: ‘Who hurt you, Zombie?’

One May morning, seven teenagers wake up to find their bedroom mirrors shining. They’ve almost all dropped out of school and, like Kokoro – the character we follow the most closely – are holed up in their rooms alone during the school day. Stepping through the mirror, they arrive in a castle and meet its custodian, a young girl in a wolf-mask who insists they address as her as ‘Wolf Queen’. She tells them the castle will be open until the following March [the end of the Japanese school year] and that they can use it as they want until then. Somewhere in the castle is a key, and whoever finds it can make a wish. But – and she calls them all her ‘Red Riding Hoods’ – if they don’t leave the castle by 5pm each day, they’ll be eaten.

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I loved so much about this book.

I loved the empathy Tsujimura has towards her characters, who are all facing problems at school and/or at home. Between them they have to deal with issues including bullying, parental neglect, bereavement, and sexual abuse (although, and I was glad of this, this wasn’t gone into in detail). Of course, Tsujimura seems to say, some of them are failing at school. Of course they’re not getting their homework done, or they’re displaying what might be called ‘problem’ behaviours. These aren’t ‘problem children’ (and I hate that whole idea), but young people who are doing their best to tackle what life’s thrown at them.

This book reminds us that ‘What’s wrong with you?’ should so often be ‘What happened to you?’, and I feel like all parents, teachers, or people who work with young people should read it. It reminds us, too, of the difference it can make to have just one good adult in your life, growing up.

I loved Tsujimura’s depiction of anxiety, and how the scale of our anxieties doesn’t always match up with the apparent size of our problems. Yes the teenagers are afraid of being eaten, but they’re just as anxious about seeming awkward, saying the wrong thing to their peers, falling behind with their schoolwork, or deciding what birthday present to buy for their friend.

The teenagers are as at least as brave as they are anxious: they feel scared of things, but do them anyway. I remembered my therapist comparing having anxiety to going about life carrying an invisible backpack – you can still do things, but it takes more effort. Tsujimura’s teenagers face up to the classroom and the threat of being eaten *despite* their invisible backpacks, and are all the more impressive for it.

I loved, too, the centrality of friendship as opposed to a romantic relationship. The idea that even if you might not have friends at some points in your life, you are deserving of friends. That there are other people like you, waiting to meet you.

I won’t tell you how it ends, but I will say that I felt nervous for a while – I was so invested in the characters that I knew I’d be heartbroken if the ending didn’t do them justice, and I struggled to see a way that things could be wrapped up while following the internal logic of the castle’s rules. I needn’t have worried.

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I wish I could say something more useful or interesting about Phillip Gabriel’s translation than that it was ‘smooth’. There were a couple of points where I thought a word choice seemed odd or clunky, only to find later on that there was (of course) a very good reason for that particular word being used. I didn’t have the original to compare to, though it’s on my ever-growing wish list.

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Have you read it?

When was the last time you read something that made you cry?