Mittens and Pity: Stories

About

Set between Kanazawa, Helsinki, Taipei, Rome, Hong Kong, and Hachijō-jima, six stories follow people navigating recent loss and learning to live with the memory of what's gone. In the title story, a couple honeymooning in Helsinki after both their mothers died must figure out how to begin a marriage that started with mourning. In each story, grief is not an obstacle to life but its texture — the thing that gives ordinary moments their weight. Winner of the Tanizaki Prize, this collection is what Yoshimoto calls the greatest achievement of her writing life since Dead-End Memories. Her prose has the same luminous simplicity, but the emotional register has deepened — these are stories written by someone who has spent decades studying how people survive loss and arrive, eventually, at something like peace. Stories about the art of continuing — told by a writer who has made that art her life's work.