“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to know where you are? You could be on the brink of an adventure, and you’re telling me you really don’t care? Use your imagination for once in your life!”
TITLE—Lonely Castle in the Mirror
AUTHOR—Mizuki Tsujimura
TRANSLATOR—Philip Gabriel (Japanese → English)
PUBLISHED—orig. 2017 (English trans. 2021)
PUBLISHER—orig. POPLAR Publishing Co. [English trans. Doubleday, Transworld Publishers (Penguin Random House)]
AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR—Sarah Skaer
AUDIOBOOK PUBLISHER—Tantor Media, Inc.
GENRE—YA spec fic
SETTING—Tokyo, Japan
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—
“A hypothetical reality seemed preferable to present reality, and the more she fantasized about how great it would be if certain things could come true, the more reality that world seemed to take on.”
Summary:
“As they struggle to abide by the rules of the game and each other’s emotional boundaries, a moving story unfolds, of seven characters trapped in a cycle of misunderstanding and loneliness, who are ultimately set free by the power of friendship, empathy and sacrifice.” (from the backcover)
My thoughts:
This book was so beautiful & moving. I’ve never read a book that depicts the experience of childhood social anxiety, agoraphobia, & the experience of being bullied so painfully accurately. The seven child characters were also so well crafted, complex, & their stories were all equally heart-breaking & heart-warming. At times this book was a bit stressful to read because I was always so worried about all of the children & there were even times when I doubted the author’s ability to possibly give this story a happy ending but I’m glad I trusted her because the ending was beyond perfect. I did guess two of the “plot-twists” but was still flabbergasted by the elements of the story that I didn’t guess. I’m still choking up a little thinking about how perfect that ending was… 🥲
“What sort of reality did this girl face that made her feel it was preferable to be eaten, for it all to be over?”
I would recommend this book to readers who have ever experienced social anxiety, bullying, agoraphobia, or trouble relating to other folks their age, or especially readers who have or know children or young people currently dealing with these things. This book is best read on audiobook if you’re a non-Japanese speaker because Skaer’s pronunciations of all the names & honorifics really helped immerse me in the worldbuilding with which I am otherwise quite unfamiliar.
“Heave-ho!”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
CW // social anxiety, agoraphobia bullying, fatphobia, pedophilia, death of child (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)
Season: the School-year
Music pairing: your favorite video game soundtrack
Further Reading—
THE GIRL FROM THE OTHER SIDE by Nagabe—TBR
HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE by Dianna Wynn Jones—TBR
MOONFLOWER by Kacen Callender
Victoria Schwab’s City of Ghosts book series (Book one: CITY OF GHOSTS)
My reviews for books 1 & 2 were like one sentence each bc it was before I started really writing longer reviews so to read more check out my review for book 3 in this series ↓
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Favorite Quotes—
<!>Spoilers</!>
“So I am no longer alone. I’ve been hoping something like this will happen for such a long time. Though I know it never will.”
“Spending so much time alone in her bedroom—gloomy during the day despite the orange curtains—feelings of guilt welled up in her. She felt she was being blamed for being slack and lazy. At first she’d enjoyed being at home, but as time passed, though no one said anything, she knew she couldn’t carry on like this.”
“There were good reasons why set rules existed. Rules like: you should open your curtains in the morning.”
“Yet when she woke up, she realized it wasn’t going to happen. As usual, her stomach was killing her. She wasn’t faking it. It really did hurt. She had no idea why, but in the mornings, her stomach, and sometimes even her head, pulsed with pain.”
“Her mother obviously wanted her to attend. The sudden accusations made that clear enough. But Kokoro wasn’t feigning illness. Her stomach really was killing her.”
“’So—what do you want to do?’ Kokoro’s legs felt paralyzed. ‘I can’t go,’ she said. It wasn’t simply that she didn’t want to go. She couldn’t. When Kokoro was finally able, with great effort, to mutter a response, her mother let out a huge sigh and grimaced, as if she too felt a twinge of pain. ‘Is it only today you can’t go? Or are you never going to go?’ Kokoro couldn’t say. She wasn’t going today, but she had no idea if, the next day, she might not have a stomachache again.”
“Why was she so sleepy? When she was at home, she always felt so much sleepier than she did at school.”
“As she untied the ribbon holding the checked cloth around it, Kokoro thought of how her mother must have pictured her as she wrapped the bento, how she saw her enjoying the lunch at the School. Her chest tightened at the thought, and she wished she could apologize to her for not going.”
“On the screen they were interviewing a housewife on the street, and when she casually made the comment that she was out “while the kids are at school,” Kokoro felt like this was a barbed rebuke directed straight at her.”
“Everyone’s walking on eggshells because of me, she thought.”
“Tojo-san’s father was a college professor researching children’s literature. On the wall, he had framed line-drawings from old illustrated books he’d picked up while in Europe. Scenes from stories Kokoro was familiar with: Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats, Hansel and Gretel… ‘Papa collects drawings by this artist, including their illustrations for the Brothers Grimm books and illustrations from the Hans Christian Andersen stories.’”
“There was a full-length mirror in Kokoro’s room. She had got her parents to put it up as soon as she had chosen her room—an oval-shaped mirror with a pink stone frame. When she looked at herself in it now, she looked sickly, and she felt like crying. She couldn’t stand to look at it anymore.”
“She seemed to be in some sort of castle. A castle from a Western fairy tale, with a magnificent gate… It was like a Disney Cinderella castle, ripped from some fantasy.”
“They want me to be how I was before I became the girl who won’t go to school.”
“Kokoro’s stomach really did hurt, and she couldn’t understand why her mother had to use that tone of voice, as if she were faking illness… There were so many things she wanted to say to her mother—that she wasn’t pretending to be ill, that she didn’t hate the School at all. She felt she needed to open up about all her feelings, and explain them in detail, but she was afraid that if she stayed in her mother’s company any longer, her mother would explode.”
“Up against the wall was a bookcase, a huge one. Kokoro caught her breath. She thought she caught a whiff of old paper. The musty smell that hit your nostrils whenever you ventured into the far corner of a tiny bookstore, the place where few people ever went. A smell she loved. The bookcase covered one entire wall and reached almost to the ceiling.”
“A teddy bear sat at the top of her bed, nestled among the oversized pillows. She picked it up and went over to the books; she ran her fingers along their spines, wondering if she would ever get to read them. She pulled out a couple. To her surprise, they were all in foreign languages. She might be able to read the ones in English a little, but the rest were in French, German or something else. Most of the books were fairy tales. She peered closely at the covers: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Snow Queen, and The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats by the Brothers Grimm. One cover showed an old man and a woman heaving up a huge turnip, which she figured must be the folk tale The Enormous Turnip. The Wolf Queen had called them all Little Red Riding Hoods, and when Kokoro spied what looked like a German edition of the book, she felt a chill run through her.”
“Only with kids who had gone through similar experiences could she really open up about what had happened, and how it made her feel. And now she’d gone and closed the door on that opportunity, and it was painful.”
“If somebody manipulated your thoughts and feelings, would you still be the same person as before?”
“She’d tried to be so careful. She’d tried her best, when she was with the two boys, Masamune and Subaru, not to do anything that would make the other girls feel uncomfortable. So why did things have to turn out the way they did?”
“’So, what’re you planning to do? How are you going to manage if you never leave the house?’ Kokoro had no idea. She wished she had an answer. But the thought of bumping into someone she knew paralyzed her.”
“Kokoro tried to convince herself she hadn’t been at home that day. Miori and the others had simply pounded on the door of an empty house, trampled over the patio, gone round and round the outside of the house. But nothing actually happened. Nothing at all. She never was about to be killed. And yet the next day, she said, ‘I have a stomachache.’ And she really did. It was no lie.”
“There were times when Kokoro regretted not catching a glimpse of her when she came by, but her relief outweighed the regret. What made her happiest, and most relieved, was if they all left her alone.”
“Her mother apologized in an exaggeratedly gentle tone. ‘I’m really sorry about yesterday,’ she said. ‘I have no intention of criticizing how you spend your time. Coming home during the day wasn’t supposed to be an unscheduled inspection. I’m sorry if it seemed that way.’ Kokoro listened uneasily. ‘Um,’ she said. ‘I won’t be coming home during the day again,’ her mother said. ‘I won’t do anything to test you.’ Maybe she was acting on advice from Ms. Kitajima, or someone else at the School? She sounded so understanding, so motherly. Thinking it might be a trap, Kokoro spent the day at home. Whatever her mother might say, she could still be monitoring her.”
“Each of us has our own reasons, Kokoro thought… Kokoro didn’t know the details of any of their situations. But she knew full well that whatever they’d experienced, it must have felt like jumping into a storm or tornado, one that would mangle and maim you.”
“Ureshino’s story was riddled with contradictions, as if perfectly expressing his own confusion. But he wasn’t lying. The emotions he felt at each moment were, no doubt, just as he described.”
“Then give them up. They might be important to you, but that’s how much energy needs to be expended to make a wish come true.”
“Fuka’s real world took on an even heavier weight. This was real, being here in the castle, she thought, but their reality lay outside, the kind of place she didn’t want to go back to if she could avoid it.”
“Kokoro wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. But she was sad. So terribly, terribly sad, and her chest felt like it was going to burst apart.”
“She understood the fear. Not knowing what the future would be for her, not knowing how long she’d be like this. Seeing people who were moving on was enough to make her feel an excruciating pain in her chest. Even Kokoro, who was just a spectator, felt Subaru’s revelation was a sort of betrayal.”
“And making friends like these would be what sustained her. I do have friends, she told herself. Even if I never make any more, I’ll know I did have friends. Right here. Right now. And I’ll have that for the rest of my life. This made her feel immeasurably more confident.”
“’It’s only school, after all.’ ‘Only school?’ ‘Yes.’ The phrase whirled in her head. She’d never, ever thought of it that way. School was everything to her, and both going and not going had been excruciating. She couldn’t consider it only school.”
“’Don’t let them get to you,’ she said, her voice stern. ‘There are bullies like them everywhere, and there always will be.’”
“You never knew how chance could change things. …don’t you want to believe that some things will change, that this is all somehow meaningful?”
<SPOILER>”It’s only school. She knew now there were other worlds, other places she could go. If she didn’t like her school, there were always the No. 1 and No. 3 junior highs nearby. She knew she’d make it. She could go anywhere. It wasn’t as if it was always going to be easy. There’d always be people she disliked. That reality wasn’t going to go away. There was a person who’d said she didn’t have to struggle if she didn’t want to. That’s why she’d decided to go back. Back to school.”</SPOILER>
<SPOILER>”I was rescued. There are children somewhere who, trembling, and at the risk of their own lives, pulled me by the arm and brought me back into this world. It’s OK, Aki. Grow up to be an adult. I’m in the future, where you are too. Children who said these words to me, kept me tethered to the world, gave me the chance to grow up. Their faces weren’t clear, but somehow she always saw Mio’s image overlaid on them. Why, she didn’t know. But this thought came to her, every time the stabbing pain in her arm returned. Now I’d like to pull those children by the arm.”</SPOILER>
Discussion Questions
The back of the u.s. edition of the book that I got from the library had these discussion questions included in the back—usually I find discussion questions kind of cringe & too many times demonstrate that the publisher didn’t wholly get the story imo but these ones I thought were excellent:
“In Japan, there are many futoko—children like Kokoro and her friends who refuse to go to school due to circumstances that impact their mental health, and whose families must choose between homeschooling or sending them to “free” schools that don’t result in any academic accreditation. How is mental health treated differently in Kokoro’s community than in your community? How do you feel about those differences?”
“Lonely Castle in the Mirror references many fairy tales, including “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats,” and others. Why do you think the author chose to use fairy tales to tell this story? Why do you think she chose these specific fairy tales?”
“The wolf-girl sets strange rules that range from utterly mundane, such as what times the children are allowed to visit the castle, to the whimsical and even the terrifying, such as the risk of being eaten up for staying past the curfew. If you could have your own castle in a mirror, what rules would you set, and who would you invite?”
“Each student has the opportunity to search in the castle for a key that can grant one wish. If you could have one wish, what would you wish for? What would you have wished for when you were younger?”