Picked this one off of the shelf because it had a nice cover and I had never heard of it. So I went into this not knowing anything beyond what was written on the cover. I had previously read a couple of Mieko Kawakami’s novels and a Murakami during a heat wave last year so I thought it was a good time.
This is a short novel covering about 1.5 years in the life of a woman and her child after being left by her husband. It plays out in 12 short (~15 page) chapters which are only loosely connected and extremely sparse in narrative detail.
The daughter is acting out (maybe related to the separation), the mother is beyond her capacity to deal with working and raising a child while meeting cultural expectations for motherhood, and the husband is exacerbating the situation. Light and shadows/darkness are one of the most used visual descriptions throughout the book.
“Territory of Light” is about a mother trying to find her feet after a separation. It spares no detail about the struggles and missteps. This novel almost feels like a diary of all the unpleasant things that happened during the process which makes it a but of an uncomfortable read at times. Maybe this was more of an interesting read than one that I really enjoyed.
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