A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

October 12, 2015
In Copleton’s uneven debut, Takahashi is visited in her old age by a man who claims to be Hideo, the grandson she believes had died during the WWII bombing of Nagasaki, which triggers memories. Amaterasu learns that Hideo was found in an orphanage and raised by Jomei Sato, an old friend of Amaterasu’s husband, Kenzo. Amaterasu remembers how she and Kenzo attempted to keep the married and much older Jomei from their 16-year-old daughter, Yuko. Amaterasu gets a better sense of the past after going through her daughter’s journals and reading letters Jomei had written to Yuko after her death, though she remains wary of Hideo and bitter about Jomei’s actions. Copleton breathes life into the first two-thirds of the book, an often-poignant narrative of the many forms of love and loss, though it’s somewhat hindered by the diary and letter-writing formats. Unfortunately, a dark secret that’s hinted at and revealed in the final act of the novel is quite outlandish, and it derails the work of the previous chapters. Though the story has many moving passages and an initially intriguing plot, the denouement strains credibility.

March 15, 2016

Four decades have passed since Amaterasu Takahashi lost her daughter and grandson in Nagasaki's atomic destruction. Now an octogenarian widow living in Philadelphia, she's shocked by the arrival of a disfigured stranger claiming to be that grandson. He brings letters from the past, as well as truths Ama kept buried most of her life. Reliving difficult memories--youthful indiscretions, desperate love affairs, estrangement from her now dead daughter--Ama resists seeing what is right before her eyes. Copleton draws on her three-year experience living in Japan to infuse her debut novel with cultural sensitivity; that said, she's not above commodifying geisha exotica a la Arthur Golden, which mars the narrative with avoidable predictability. Narrator Nancy Wu is one of the slightly less ubiquitous readers trotted out for Asian-themed titles regardless of actual ethnic heritage. She has voiced sagas from Amy Tan, Jeannie Lin, Cecily Wong, and more and here gives an effective-enough read, albeit with the occasional stumble in Japanese. VERDICT Published in 2015 to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Japan, Dictionary has enough gravitas to complement most historical fiction collections. ["A well-crafted and lightly suspenseful tale of true and forbidden love and a wealth of secret revelations": LJ 12/15 review of the Penguin hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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