This review first appeared in Booklist on August 1, 2025.
For Adam, life feels like a series of struggles. At home, tensions with his distant father and wary stepmother are coming to a head. At school, with college looming, there’s pressure to decide his future—particularly whether he wants to pursue music professionally, which he enjoys but doesn’t feel especially passionate about. Emotionally, he feels heartbroken and adrift, unsure if he truly belongs anywhere. Then he finds a kindred spirit in a diary written a century ago by a passionate, independent young woman whose experiences seem to mirror his own. But she also writes about ghosts that come to her in the night, seeking solace. Adam assumes this is mere metaphor—until he’s suddenly haunted by the woman’s own restless, sullen spirit. Hoping to give her peace, Adam embarks on a journey to unravel not only the mysteries of a tangled past but also those of his own tumultuous present. Lyrical and haunting, Kumagai’s ghostly tale of love and identity is a testament to the healing power of story and its capacity to bridge divides between cultures and generations. Based on Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, this is an act of reclamation, telling the story from the perspective of the opera’s most marginalized character and illuminating often overlooked aspects of Japanese life in the early twentieth century. A beautiful and necessary work.
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