Rei, Kiki and Ai are three sisters whose lives have taken them on very different paths. They have lost both parents, one way or another, and found their own ways of carrying on. Eldest daughter Rei is spiky and sensible, distracting herself with an all-consuming job at a financial corporation in London. Big-hearted Kiki is a single mother in Tokyo, juggling the demands of her young son and the cantankerous elderly residents of the retirement home she works in. Ai, the free-spirited youngest, is a Japanese pop idol who has found fame and fortune but lost herself along the way.
When Ai is embroiled in a scandal and thrust into the spotlight, Rei must pick up the pieces of her family once more. Over the course of a summer in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters reunite with their sharp-tongued grandmother, entertain Kiki’s irrepressible son and silently worry about Ai, carefully avoiding the subject of their mother’s death fifteen years before. But silence between sisters can only last for so long . . .
Transporting, funny and moving, Kakigori Summer is an uplifting exploration of love and loss, sisterhood and family, the stories we tell ourselves about the past and how they determine our future.
When Ai is embroiled in a scandal and thrust into the spotlight, Rei must pick up the pieces of her family once more. Over the course of a summer in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters reunite with their sharp-tongued grandmother, entertain Kiki’s irrepressible son and silently worry about Ai, carefully avoiding the subject of their mother’s death fifteen years before. But silence between sisters can only last for so long . . .
Transporting, funny and moving, Kakigori Summer is an uplifting exploration of love and loss, sisterhood and family, the stories we tell ourselves about the past and how they determine our future.
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Reviews
I loved Kakigori Summer . . . The sisters felt completely real, my sympathies finely balanced between all three of them and their different internal struggles were beautifully and poignantly evoked . . . I loved the well-crafted prose, the distinctive, slightly acerbic turns of phrase . . . joyful and uplifting too: the romantic and hopeful ending felt just right
This novel had me hooked from the first chapter. Three sisters, Japan, the complexities of family bonds, love and loss. I got totally immersed in their lives. It's funny and insightful and poignant and uplifting . . . And a rare accolade - the most excellent and satisfying ending!
I adore Emily Itami's writing . . . Kakigori Summer is a novel about belonging, both within a family and the wider world, and I loved retreating into its cocoon of sibling humour as the sisters briefly stepped back to discover their place in it. Cosy, dreamy, although you're never too far from a line that's sharply astute
An inviting and wistful tale of three sisters who reunite during a crisis . . . Itami strikes just the right chord, showing how the sisters indulge their nostalgia for happier times even as they attempt to reckon with their painful memories. Readers are in for a treat