The Rambling Writer Book Review: The Baseball Widow by Suzanne Kamata

Compelling characters, immersion in Japanese daily life, culture clash—and baseball!

I’ve been reading several books selected by the International Pulpwood Queens & Timber Guys Book Club, now that my novel Pause has been chosen as a 2022 title. I look forward to meeting Suzanne Kamata via this week’s Zoom book conversation hosted by Kathy L. Murphy for PQTG authors and readers. (Go to www.thepulpwoodqueens.com for weekly author schedules and links.)

In this fascinating novel set mostly in small-town Japan, Suzanne Kamata paints a vivid picture of daily life that can sometimes be frustrating and claustrophobic for the “baseball widow” Christine, an American who married a Japanese baseball coach. When they married, Christine believed that love would transcend cultural differences, but as the years pass, she becomes unhappy with the restrictions of the very regulated Japanese way of life. Mostly, she misses her husband Hideki, who devotes almost every waking hour to his baseball team and his teaching career. She is left to manage their two children, one of whom is multiply disabled. She finds that she misses the openness of American life, which leads to a crisis for the family.

The point of view rotates between other characters as well—chiefly Hideki and one of his promising proteges on the team. Daisuke had spent three years in the U.S., and now in his return to Japan, he also struggles to readapt.

I was drawn in empathy toward all the characters in their different struggles, and Kamata has a deft touch in painting their interior lives. Equally vivid are all the small details of Japanese life, from the year-round baseball practices (As a non-fan, I might say “obsessions”) to karaoke clubs to the rituals of greetings and neighborhood protocols in close-packed houses “where you could hear the phone ringing three houses away.” I felt that I was there with the nail-biting games, Christine’s aching knees as she kneels with the Japanese wives for hours to painstakingly craft the rigidly perfect name tags for the children’s school, and Daisuke’s painful longing for a troubled teenage girl whose mother is not approved by the community. I also rooted for Christine and Hideki’s wheelchair-dependent, hearing impaired daughter, whose fearless embrace of life is an inspiring model for us all.

Clearly I don’t have a wish to live in Japan, but am grateful for this intimate glimpse of a different culture. Suzanne Kamata’s gifted writing lets me be an armchair traveler!

*****

You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky). Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com