Strange Weather in Tokyo, by Hiromi Kawakami, is a novel from 2001. It's only recently been translated into English, in 2012, and, though I don't have the first idea what the linguistic nuances of Japanese are, it seems to me that Allison Markin Powell has done a brilliant job of retaining its essentially Japanese character while making it as natural in English as if that's the language in which it was conceived.
It's a love story. And a tale of loneliness. It's less quirky than the whimsical title suggests; in fact, its original title was The Briefcase. There's a strong sense of place, the reader's senses are tantalised with descriptions of the tastes of food and drink. At moments the tale is firmly rooted in real life, real emotions; at others it seems like a hallucination, an invention of the narrator's mind. It's not a long story, coming in at just 176 pages. But it is perfectly formed, in 17 sub-titled episodes. It's quiet, understated, beautifully observed and beautifully written. If you read one book this year, I couldn't recommend this more highly.
Coming in a close second is Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I can't tell you what that's about, though, I'm afraid, as there is a jawdropping twist that makes the novel. Suffice to say it is a story about a family and what happens when it falls apart.
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