A Perfect Day to Be Alone: A Novel [Paperback]

The English-language debut of a prize-winning Japanese author, this touching, subtly funny novel evokes the daily struggles and hopes of two women from different generations.

When her mother emigrates to China for work, 20-year-old Chizu moves in with 71-year-old Ginko, an eccentric distant relative, taking a room in her ramshackle Tokyo home, with its two resident cats and the persistent rattle of passing trains.

Living their lives in imperfect symmetry, they establish an uneasy alliance, stress tested by Chizu’s flashes of youthful spite. As the four seasons pass, Chizu navigates a series of tedious part-time jobs and unsatisfying relationships, before eventually finding her feet and salvaging a fierce independence from her solitude.

A Perfect Day to Be Alone is a moving, microscopic examination of loneliness and heartbreak. With flashes of deadpan humor and a keen eye for poignant detail, Aoyama chronicles the painful process of breaking free from the moorings of youth.“A young woman spends a year adrift in Aoyama’s elegant English-language debut…Aoyama adeptly conveys Chizu’s loneliness and how her unvoiced emotions drive her attempts to pull others into her misery. The result is a notable tale of arrested development.” —Publishers Weekly

“A delicate exploration of existential drift…rich in atmospheric detail…captures the nature of young adulthood with an immediacy and integrity that leads us to a liminal space, where the future looms uncertain…an evocative meditation on youth, aging, and all the spaces in between.” —Asymptote Journal

“A subtly moving meditation on aging, self-discovery, and how we relate to each other. The slim yet substantial novel islS1