The North Light set in Japan – Hideo Yokoyama

Submitted: 26th October 2023

Minoru Aose is an architect who designed the Yoshino house, a prizewinning and much discussed private residence built in the shadow of Mount Asama. He discovers the house is abandoned so sets out to find why the house he would have loved to own himself was so brutally dismissed?

Sometimes the truth we look for, isn’t always the truth we want to find.

BookTrail Travel to the North Light

Boarding Pass Information:

Author guide: Hideo Yokoyama

Genre: translated fiction

Food and drink to accompany: Japanese cuisine of course!

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BookTrail Travel to the North Light

This book read like a dream sequence. An architect builds a house only for it then to remain empty apart from a single chair. A couple had asked him to design this house in a very particular way so he is stunned to find out that they have never lived there. The house is empty and so starts his journey into finding out why.

This is the basic premise of the plot and there’s no quick fire action or thriller to it. What it is is a mystery, a slow burn of a mystery in the world of architects. It’s hard to explain more than that but I felt it was quite insightful into so many issues including identity, war and human dramas in all its forms.

The story thread about the famous architect Bruno Taut was a lovely addition and this captivated me in unexpected ways. I was drawn into the world of architecture and it fascinated me. I’ve never really thought about it before so it was a nice surprise to find out just what kind of world it is.

All in all, it was a fine characters study, an unassuming novel that whispers at first but by the end its voice is loud and clear. They say you have to watch out for the quiet ones and this is the bookish equivalent of that.