THE HERON CATCHERS

Joiner offers a meditative novel about love and abandonment set in the picturesque Japanese countryside.

Things are not going well for Sedge, a Westerner living in Japan. Until just before the action of the novel begins, he owned and operated a ceramics shop with his Japanese wife, Nozomi. When Nozomi leaves him, without warning, for a highly talented and respected ceramicist, Sedge is devastated—the abandonment would be bad enough, but Nozomi left with all their money, too. Stuck in dire straits, Sedge receives a lifeline from an unlikely source: Nozomi’s brother, Takahashi, and his wife, Yuki. They offer him free residence at their ryokan in the hot spring resort town of Yamanaka Onsen under the condition that he teach English to the inn’s staff. The situation is complicated by the fact that Mariko (the wife of the man Nozomi ran off with) works there, too, and is keen to meet Sedge. They soon grow close when Sedge—much to the dismay of Takahashi and Yuki, who want him to keep a low-profile—begins teaching Mariko privately at her home. There, he meets her stepson, Riku, a bright if troubled child who was also left behind when his father fled. As Sedge and Mariko bond over their shared trauma, they discover they have much in common—in particular, their love for herons. As their companionship evolves into sex and romance, their need for secrecy only increases—neither of them has heard from either of their runaway spouses, and things could implode at any moment. Joiner’s novel is full of pastoral beauty: “Two or three herons stood in each field…perhaps thirty fields altogether unfurling toward the sea. Even the river, miniaturized by distance, had herons circling above it.” Through clean prose eliciting a placid calm (which deftly evokes the landscape), readers spend time with characters who feel full and human, and whose dramas, in their quiet way, will leave a lasting impression.

A powerful journey through emotional devastation led by some unforgettable characters.