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Characters linked in ‘Love We Share’
The second novel by YSU professor Chris Barzak is set in Japan.
Christopher Barzak revisits some familiar themes in his new novel, “The Love We Share Without Knowing.”
Just like his debut, “One for Sorrow” (2007),” it centers on characters who are yearning for acceptance and happiness, love and resolution. There are also mystical elements — a lover’s curse that traps a man in his dreams, for example — and again, the line between the living and the dead is blurred.
But the new book is more ambitious.
It’s set in Japan, a place Barzak knows because he lived there from 2004 to 2006. Most of the action takes place in Tokyo and its suburbs.
“The Love We Share” is actually more like a series of short stories, although the characters are intrinsically linked. It is an innovative storytelling approach reminiscent of Academy Award-winning movie “Crash” (2004). Random lives in a big city intersect at certain points, but only the reader sees the big picture.
Typically, it works like this: A bit player in one chapter reappears in the next as a central character.
For example, a ghost is later revealed as the late friend of a new character. Or the female half of a one-night stand shows up later as a struggling housekeeper.
The back story is then filled in.
After a few chapters, the reader finds himself eagerly waiting to learn who will pop up next.
Another movie that could serve as a literary buoy is the 2003 Oscar-winner “Lost In Translation.” In that film, as in “The Love We Share,” Americans wrestle with their own demons in very un-Western Japan. Their loneliness is exacerbated by the formality of the Japanese people, who maintain an arm’s length attitude toward foreigners.
Learning the language is one way to understand the psyche of a nation, and Barzak seems to be conversational in Japanese, judging by his use of it. The residue of his tales is an insight into Japanese culture. Like a beehive, it is frenetic and productive. But it’s populated by worker bees who are acutely polite, locked into their roles, and submissive to the greater group.
The unhappiness can be tragic. In one story, a group of friends carries out a suicide pact (suicide is a recurring theme).
The stories also have all the qualities of good short fiction. Each chapter goes to a new place with efficiency, but yet is fully developed. And the whole is made more rewarding because each story is interconnected.
Plus, the characters are too much under love’s sway to be bland or murky.
Barzak, a Trumbull County native and a professor at Youngstown State University, earned much praise for his debut. “One for Sorrow” won the Crawford Fantasy Award for Best First Novel; was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and The Village Voice; and was nominated for the Great Lakes Book Award.
With “The Love We Share,” he makes a convincing case that he is on the literary scene to stay.