CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 1993)
People will tell you that I've done this because I did not love you. Don't listen to them. When you grow up to be a strong woman, you will know that this is for the best." These words, left in a suicide note, and memories are all that 12-year-old Yuki has to comfort her after her mother's death. Her cold, distant father provides no strength, nor does the new wife he takes one year later. Yuki becomes buried in bitterness and anger as she grows. She feels she must fight her stepmother for the right to keep every memory of her mother that is rooted in physical things, while she becomes more and more aware of the pain her mother endured in a marriage that not only had no love, but also wiped out her strength to endure. Only art, and running, and visits to her grandparents where the memory of her mother is enshrined provide respite for Yuki from the constant battles she is waging at home, and it is only in leaving home for good that she is finally able to free herself from her bitterness and grief. This emotionally intricate novel set in contemporary Japan takes place over seven years and follows Yuki from adolescence through age 19, when she has grown into the strong woman her mother knew she would someday become. CCBC categories: Fiction For Teenagers. 1993, Henry Holt, 227 pages, $15.95. Ages 12-16.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1993)
Mori (Creative Writing/Saint Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin) returns to her native Japan for a lyrical first novel with the intensity of remembered grief. Yuki's gentle mother commits suicide after assuring the anxious 12-year-old that she is "all right." Like her mother Shizuko, to whom she was exceptionally close, Yuki is talented and resilient; but she too is thwarted by a restrictive society and a miserable family situation. For Shizuko, there was no hope--though she loved her daughter, her husband was cold, dictatorial, and usually absent; and though (as Yuki will learn) she was once attracted to a more congenial man, she would have lost Yuki in a divorce. Life becomes nearly as bleak for Yuki: her father marries his mistress, who is obseasively antagonistic to Yuki, and he prevents Yuki from communicating with her mother's loving relatives. Even Yuki's talents are stumbling blocks to friendship: highly intelligent, creative, assertive, she doesn't fit into the traditional Japan of the 70's. Only at 18 does she break free by rejecting the fine local university to go to a distant art school. Still compulsively gauche, in the end she mellows toward her grandparents and makes a strong friendship with the promise of blossoming into love. A beautifully written book about a bitterly painful coming of age, intensified by exquisite sensory motifs--flavors and aromas, light and color, the weight and ornamentation of clothing. Yuki's unsympathetically portrayed father may not be fully realized; but like Suzanne Staples's Shabanu (1989), Yuki is unforgettable. A splendid debut. 1993, Holt, $15.95. Starred Review. © 1993 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Betsy Hearne (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May 1993 (Vol. 46, No. 9))
A first novel that truly bridges the interests of young adults and adults, this is written in a spare, intricately balanced style interweaving several viewpoints without losing sharp focus. The book opens with the calm, carefully deliberated suicide of eleven-year-old Yuki's beautiful but unhappy mother, Shizuko, who turns on the gas while her daughter's taking a music lesson at the piano teacher's house. Most of the remaining fifteen scenes, each dated sometime in the next seven years, detail Yuki's grief, survival, and understanding of her mother's death, but this journeys far beyond a "problem novel" in scope. It is a fully realized portrayal of a Japanese family to the depth of three generations and at least six individuals, including the cold father and stepmother whom Yuki defies, as well as the warm grandparents whose richly traditional patterns of living bring aching recollections of Yuki's mother. The tension of the characters themselves serves as driving action. The strong will and sense of artistry that isolate Yuki finally save her, and readers will be moved beyond cultural boundaries by the author's ability to render nuances of childhood with an immediacy devoid of nostalgia. Most impressive, technically, is Mori's flow of a narrative voice that subtly translates aesthetic observations into readers' experiences-the color and texture of flowers, of clothing, of pottery, of human love's pain and release. Such authenticity illuminates the fictional realities and motivations without intrusion or distraction, so that readers will feel themselves enlightened by an encounter with that rare achievement, a powerfully understated story. R*--Highly recommended as a book of special distinction. (c) Copyright 1993, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1993, Holt, 227p, $15.95. Grades 8 up.

Susan Stan (The Five Owls, May/June 1993 (Vol. 7, No. 5))
While many multicultural books have appeared in the past few years, the need is far from satisfied, and books written from an insider's perspective--by an author who is part of the culture being written about--are especially welcome. Born and raised in Japan, Kyoko Mori now lives in Wisconsin. In her debut as a novelist, Mori transports readers to Japan two decades ago. Yuki Okuda is twelve when she loses her mother, Shizuko, to suicide, and after a year spent with her aunt in Tokyo, she returns to Kobe to live with her father and his new bride. She knows their life would be happier without her; without a wife, it was understandable that she not live with her father, but his status in society would be compromised if she did not move back after he remarried. So Yuki endures her father's coldness and her stepmother's hostility throughout her high school years, cherishing and reliving memories of her mother. Bright and talented, Yuki fills her spare time with homework, running laps, and an evening job at the library, but nothing can fill the emotional void left by her mother's death. Yuki accepts her situation silently but not passively, and by the time she graduates, she has arranged a leavetaking that will save face for her father and his wife: she goes to art school in Nagasaki, far away. Thanks to Yuki's artistic eye, which never fails to notice such details as yellow marigolds, pink azaleas, the lime-green dress of a friend's mother, or the tight weave of a straw hat, the text abounds with color and texture. Paradoxically, the story is at once austere and filled with belongings, all removed from sight by her jealous stepmother--Yuki's childhood clothes, which her mother had lovingly sewn and embroidered for her; the pottery tea set they picked out together after watching the potter at work; Yuki's own childhood drawings, neatly boxed for posterity by her mother; and even her mother's clothes, packed away in the attic after the funeral. Though one by one the items are destroyed, they remain in existence for Yuki, both in her memory and in her sketch-books. Americans have no exclusive claim on dysfunctional families, and some readers will find aspects of Yuki's unhappy family life all too familiar. The effects of Japan's strong patrilinear society, however, may disorient readers. Although Yuki's ties to her maternal aunt and grandparents had been closely forged while her mother was living, these relatives can maintain only minimal contact with her for fear of affronting her father. Yet their early ties support her and help in her eventual healing process. 1993, Henry Holt, $15.95. Ages 11 up.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, 1993)
Mori's moving and unforgettable novel paints pictures with words as she recounts the struggles of a modern Japanese teenager coming to terms with her mother's suicide. (Edge Books series). Category: Fiction. 1993, Holt, 227pp.. Ages 14 to 18. Rating: 1: Outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration.