The Premonition

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‘Yoshimoto’s novels are like jewel boxes.’ Vanity Fair’Reading Banana Yoshimoto is like taking a bracing, cleansing bath.’ LING MA’A sure and lyrical writer . . . Yoshimoto transforms the trite into the essential.’ The New YorkerThe new novel from the bestselling author of the beloved classic, Kitchen.

I had a premonition of setting out on a journey and getting lost inside a distant tide … It was the beginning of summer, and I was nineteen years old.

Yayoi lives with her perfect, loving family – something ‘like you’d see in a Spielberg movie’. But while her parents tell happy stories of her childhood, she is increasingly haunted by the sense that she’s forgotten something important about her past.

Deciding to take a break, she goes to stay with her mysterious but beloved aunt Yukino, whose strange behaviour includes waking Yayoi at two in the morning to be her drinking companion, watching Friday the 13th repeatedly and throwing away all the things she wants to forget.

Living a life without order, Yukino seems to be protecting herself, but beneath this facade Yayoi starts to recover lost memories, and everything she knows about her past threatens to change forever.