Chorus of Mushrooms: week seven

Thank you to those who attended the in-person discussion last Saturday! What a great chat, and I hope more of you will join us for our next book, The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear!

We've come to the end of Chorus of Mushrooms - this week, I want to talk a little bit about the end of Part Four as well as Part Five. Finish the book before reading this post, because I'm not going to hold back from spoilers!

At the end of the book, we finally hear Keiko's perspective in her own words, and from Muriel's father Sam. Adult Murasaki decides to embark on a new chapter of her life, and Naoe continues a mysterious career as a bullrider in Calgary known as The Purple Mask. Are you satisfied with the ending? What questions does it leave you with? Would you change the story, as Goto tells us we can?

I'm also very interested in "Tengu's" story, and the revelation that he doesn't have a name. How does this relate to the earlier discussions we've had about naming and renaming in the book? What is the nameless man, alias Tengu's, role in the story, and does his namelessness reflect that role, or somehow challenge it?

I'll also pose the question I asked on Facebook, which is: Both Naoe and Murasaki are told that they have been speaking to their lovers in Japanese since meeting them, without having realized it. What does this tell you about these relationships, and each of their relationship to the language?

As someone who learned enough Japanese to hold a conversation with GREAT difficulty, I think that Japanese and English are too vastly different for such a thing to really be possible, no matter how fluent you are in both - the content of what you are saying changes with the language, not just the sounds. So I take this move on Goto's part to be a kind of magical realism - the same fantastical streak that lets Naoe spontaneously pull off an award-winning gymnastics routine. But why this fantastical detail, or indeed any of them (can you name other examples)? What does it reveal about Naoe's and Murasaki's respective, and collective, stories/story?

Thank you for reading with me, and I hope you'll join me for The Letter Opener next month! I'll start posting about that book in two weeks.

-Carolyn