Sakura

About

Sakura is the story of a family that was happy, until it wasn't. Skipping between past and present, narrator Kaoru pieces together the trajectory of his family's unraveling — the parents who drifted apart, the brother who withdrew, the sister who carried everyone's weight — and the dog, Sakura, who became the unlikely thread holding them all together when everything else frayed. Kanako Nishi's international bestseller writes about family dysfunction with a tenderness that never excuses the damage. Each family member's perspective adds a layer to the portrait, revealing how the same events can be experienced as love by one person and abandonment by another. Sakura the dog provides the novel's emotional center — unconditional, patient, and present in a way the humans struggle to be. A novel about the family you can't fix — and the dog who loves you anyway, which turns out to be exactly the same thing.