Honeybees and Distant Thunder: The million copy award-winning Japanese bestseller about the enduring power of great friendship

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If you’re a long-time reader of this blog when it comes to my book reviews, you’ve probably already noticed this, but I have a deep love and appreciation for translated literature. Foster’s latest, highly imaginative work of creative nonfiction envisages the lives of animals, from gannets to otters, in this harsh, human-dominated world.

I picked this one up already knowing the likelihood I would enjoy the read was high, having grown up in a musical household and studying music myself. Gdyby nie ta muzyka, nie byłoby ich, nie znaliby się, nie spotkaliby się… gdyby nie ta muzyka, byliby innymi ludźmi… a może w ogóle nie byliby ludźmi?Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit.

This book reads like a screenplay adaptation of a shonen manga, with its manga characters, manga narrative, manga flashbacks and manga reactions. Welcome to a magical world of music, friendship and rivalry … In a small coastal town just a stone’s throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Even readers with no prior affection for the works played in the competition should be tantalized into taking a listen by Onda's descriptions of the music and its effects on listeners; one piece sounds like “a fluffy, plumped-up quilt, cushiony, as well as slightly damp” and another like a “thick, rough-hewn log. I would categorize this a philosophy book, really -- an exploration of art and music from a variety of perspectives. It is too long, pretentious, badly written, overdone and I was the happiest when I was finally, finally done reading it.Onda's rich descriptions capture often elusive topics—music and longing—and bring the classical repertoire to vivid life. The prose in this book often brought me to tears, particularly parts told from the perspective of the oldest competitor in the group, Akashi. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.