Kakigori Summer - Paperback

by Emily Itami (Author)

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR

A wry and tender novel from the author of Fault Lines about three very different sisters reunited in adulthood for one short summer in coastal Japan, navigating domestic life with their sharp-edged grandmother and decidedly avoiding resurfaced memories of their mother's disappearance--for readers of Hello Beautiful and Blue Sisters.

"This novel had me hooked from the first chapter. Three sisters, Japan, the complexities of family bonds, love and loss. I got totally immersed in their lives. It's funny and insightful and poignant and uplifting . . . And a rare accolade--the most excellent and satisfying ending!" --Karen Angelico, author of Everything We Are

Rei, Kiki, and Ai are half-Japanese, half-British sisters divided by distance and circumstance. Ambitious Rei works in finance in London; Kiki is the single mother of a young son, working in a retirement home in Tokyo; and Ai, the youngest, is a peripatetic Japanese music idol. Bonded by the loss of their parents and their shared haafu identity, the sisters rely on each other as family, far-flung as they are.

When Ai is embroiled in a scandal, Rei and Kiki pause their own lives to rescue their baby sister. Over the course of a summer spent in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters will reunite with their sharp-edged grandmother, care for Kiki's irrepressible son, and silently worry about Ai, all while carefully not talking about the circumstances of their mother's death fifteen years before. But silence between sisters can only last for so long...

A transporting and redemptive novel, Kakigori Summer is a hopeful meditation on love and loss, sisterhood and family, and a profound exploration of the stories we tell ourselves about our past that enable us to move forward into the future.