LION CROSS POINT, short novella about the magic moment kidhood ends

LION CROSS POINT
MASATSUGU ONO (tr. Angus Turvill)
Two Lines Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: When 10-year-old Takeru arrives at his mother's home village in the middle of a scorching summer, he's all alone and in possession of terrible memories. Unspeakable things have happened to his mother and his mentally disabled 12-year-old brother.

As Takeru gets to know Mitsuko, his new caretaker, and Saki, his spunky neighbor, he meets more of his mother's old friends, discovering her history and confronting the terrible acts that have left him alone. All the while he begins to see a strange figure that calls himself Bunji—the same name of a delicate young boy who mysteriously vanished one day on the village's coastline at Lion's Cross Point.

At once the moving tale of a young boy forced to confront demons well beyond his age, a sensitive portrayal of a child's point of view, and a spooky Japanese ghost story, Lion's Cross Point is gripping and poignant. Acts of heartless brutality mix with surprising moments of pure kindness, creating this utterly truthful tale of an unforgettable young boy.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'll start with my favorite thing about the read. Its translator has chosen a Zazie in the Metro-type interpretation of the child PoV's speech, extending it to all the people in this very small, very young group. This includes no "ng" dipthongs in English...which made me wonder what the Japanese equivalent must be since the language does not use dipthongs...and lots of elisions like "happy t'see me?" and the like. It's something that will, if the occasional comments I receive on my own usage of this technique are any indicator, make some of y'all really mad. I myownself felt as though I was sitting there, in Ken's car, or when Sasaki buys Takeru (our PoV boy) a soda. As Sasaki does not use the elisive speech pattern we're reinforced that he's really old. "You're a grandpa?" Takeru asks him in surprise. "Certainly am," replies Sasaki; Ken, not anything like as old as Sasaki despite being old enough to have a car and to run around with the kids all over, is a serial elider.

It felt right and welcoming to me. You do you.

The fancier people who surround Takeru's absent mother all speak something rendered as Standard English, like Sasaki; this device lets us know we're in rural Otherland coompared to the sophisticates Takeru's mother prefers to him and his developmentally delayed brother. They live in this village, the one where their mother grew up because some stuff happened and it was wiser and safer her for mother to send her boys to live with her mother. She's never there. She hates it there: "I hated it. Detested it. I wanted to get away as soon as I could." Relatable to many, though why she then sends her boys there...other solutions to the issue that made a change necessary were available.

We're not let in on the cause of this family separation. It becomes obvious during the course of the kids being in this lovely summer idyll, looking for dolphins, going to see them at the titular Lion's Cross Point and adjacent beaches and oceanside fun. Takeru has a relatable moment of real fear when told he can see the dolphins at Lion's Cross Point and won't that be great? He's seized by the sudden terror that he might have to go swimming with the dolphins; on being reassured that he won't, his chest-expanding deep breath of relief made me feel so protective of him.

In a hundred or so pages Author Ono (a translator from English to Japanese himself) and Translator Turvill do nothing, nothing happens, there's no action to speak of; but everything changes, Takeru becomes a youth from the chrysalis of kidhood. And he does it in front of you, though you're never told nor shown just how it happens. Like with real kids, you have to listen, examine what's going on quietly without intruding, and reach your best conclusion. You might be right, you might not, because the inner life of a young person is taking root. It happens in front of you but invisible to you.

The end result, however, leaves you in no doubt that something seismic has shifted. All five of my stars and a gentle push to get it into your cart.