Lynne Kutsukake is a third-generation Japanese Canadian. She is a former Japanese studies librarian at the University of Toronto. Her short story “Mating,” originally published in The Dalhousie Review, was a finalist for the Journey Prize in 2010. The previous year, her short story “Away,” first published in Grain Magazine, was a finalist for the Journey Prize.
Fiction
The Art of Vanishing
Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2024.
forthcoming June 2024
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Akemi’s desire for independence and aversion to marriage are unusual in her small village. A gift for drawing allows her to move to a rooming house in Tokyo where she studies medical illustration, finding satisfaction in the precision and purpose of her work. Sayako is the first roommate to pay Akemi attention, and they quickly become inseparable—Sayako drawn to Akemi’s humble origins, so distinct from her own insufferable, wealthy family; Akemi attracted to Sayako’s rebelliousness and her aspiration to be a painter.
As Akemi begins to model for Sayako, their connection deepens. Together, they attend ‘happenings,’ encounters arranged by two enigmatic artists, Nezu and Kaori, in random locations, intended to free them from their worldly attachments. Following a devastating betrayal, Sayako disappears, and Akemi becomes determined to find her—and in the process, must newly face herself.
Tender, enthralling, and evocative of the energy of Japan in the 1970s, The Art of Vanishing is the story of a young woman struggling to see and be seen; of authenticity and art; of the thin line between loyalty and obsession.
Fiction
The Translation of Love: A Novel
Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2016.
PS8621 .U87 T73 2016
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
After spending the war years in a Canadian internment camp, thirteen-year-old Aya Shimamura and her father are faced with a gut-wrenching choice: move east of the Rocky Mountains or go “back” to Japan. Barred from returning home to the West Coast and bitterly grieving the loss of Aya’s mother during internment, Aya’s father signs a form that enables the government to deport them.
But war-devastated Tokyo is not much better. Aya’s father struggles to find work, compromising his morals and toiling long hours. Meanwhile, Aya, born and raised in Vancouver, is something of a pariah at her school, bullied for being foreign and paralyzed when asked to communicate in Japanese. Aya’s alienation is eventually mitigated by one of her principal tormenters, a willful girl named Fumi Tanaka, whose older sister has mysteriously disappeared. …
Told through rich, interlocking story lines, The Translation of Love mines this turbulent period to show how war irrevocably shapes the lives of people on both sides—and yet the novel also allows for a poignant spark of resilience, friendship, and love that translates across cultures and borders to stunning effect.
Awards and Honours
2016 Canada-Japan Literary Award (Winner)
2017 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize–Literary Fiction (Winner)
Anthology (Short story)
“Away” was first published in Grain Magazine. It was shortlisted for the 2009 awarding of The Journey Prize. It appeared in The Journey Prize: Stories: The Best of Canada’s New Writers (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009).
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Anthology (Short story)
“Mating” was first published in the journal The Dalhousie Review. It was a finalist for the 2010 awarding of The Journey Prize. It appeared in The Journey Prize: Stories: The Best of Canada’s New Writers (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2010).
PS8329.J68
Links
Publisher Knopf Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada
Lynne Kutsukake entry in the Japanese Canadian Artists Directory