Been lazy and neglected writing and posting book reviews, but the truth is I have not read anything great that I felt compelled to write about… that is until Keiichiro Hirano’s A Man, my twelfth read this year.

I was browsing at the only worthy bookshop left in Singapore and as usual I wandered to the Japanese literature section. An unwittingly titled novel, A Man, caught my eye. A divorce lawyer, Akira Kido, turned sleuth for a former client, Rié Takemoto. He is tasked to look into her recently deceased husband who had been living a lie: his entire identity belonged to someone else, a total stranger. The investigation draws Kido into two puzzling mysteries: finding out who Rié’s husband really was and discovering more about the man he pretended to be. Who can resist a good mystery?

I put the book down and opened my library app. The novel was available at the library located just 200 metres from me. I am sure a smile was plastered on my face as I made a quick trip there.

A Man is a gripping read but it isn’t a page-turner in the traditional sense. I found myself stopping after a chapter or two, pondering over the profound ideas of identity conveyed. Kido’s search for the answers to the two-pronged mystery also leads him to examine himself. He feels like a foreigner in a land where he has become a naturalised citizen. Furthermore, his marriage is on its last legs because of an emotional disconnect.

The novel is steeped in rich Japanese cultural history and Hirano poses thoughtful questions of what makes you, you, so literally that the novel becomes an examination of the art of writing. It is that rare novel that is part procedural and part introspection, blurring the line between real and lie, making you question your own existence. So many times my mind would mull over the thought-provoking lines…

“The problem now was not who he was in the present but who he’d been in the past, and the solution he sought was no longer supposed to help him live but to help him figure out what sort of person to die as.”

“he lived in constant danger of being crushed between the past and the future, between his need to suffer for his father’s sins and his terror of recapitulating them.”

“But the result is that I’m able to get in touch with my life indirectly through someone else’s. And I’m able to think about the things that I need to think about. There’s no way for me to do this directly. My body rejects it every time I try. That’s why I said it’s sort of like reading a novel. No one can deal with their suffering on their own. We all seek someone else to be the conduit for our emotions.”

Hirano deftly manoeuvres through a minefield of questions and arrives with the idea that sometimes, just sometimes, fiction can be the truth. And in all my years of reading, this has to be one of the best final paragraphs I have ever read. I was so glad to keep turning the pages, but felt so sad when the story ended.

***** /5