I heard about Clarissa Goenawan’s second book first, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida, and then this one. Reading its title, I didn’t realise that Rainbirds was a mystery, suspense-ish kind of book, and, honestly, I didn’t put much thought into this one. That being said, I am glad that one day I randomly searched the book on Goodreads! After reading the synopsis of Rainbirds, I decided to add it into my endless tbr list.

You can read the summary on its Goodreads’ page—but to put it simply, in my opinion, this book is about a journey of Ren Ishida, the main character, on finding what he truly wants and where he truly belongs, through a so-called sad process namely his sister’s death.

The Reading Process

It took me five days (more or less) to finish the book, but it was because I didn’t want it to end quickly. The first thing that caught my eyes are the chapter titles; nowadays books only have numbers in differentiating their chapter, but not this one! My favourite ones are: chapter 2 “How to Make Curry Rice” and chapter 13 “The Days of Bubbles.”

I also made several small notes here and there—pointing out quotes that I like, and points that are interesting (or suspicious, or unresolved, haha) with pencil. I found a new vocabulary here: key money! From a quick google search, it’s like a deposit before we rent a room, but it is not refundable, and it is not the same as a down payment because it is not part of the whole price. Please correct me if I am wrong, though.

Contrary to my expectation while reading the blurb, I think this book doesn’t really focus on the murder mystery, but more to the self-discovery of our protagonist. I expected things like finding out fake alibis, someone’s dark secret related to his sister’s life, some unresolved crime done by his sister, or, you know, the usual detective story tropes. The only thing we get is the ‘scandal’ with Akakawa’s wealthy politician and Keiko Ishida’s odd preference in choosing her lovers—and the rest is Ren’s inner turmoil in dealing with himself.

It is nice, though. I enjoy the process of Ren walking here and there, gaining some ‘friends’ along the way, and finding out the town’s hotel’s odd history instead of his sister’s. It is like life—it just flows, following the stream, and we don’t have any control whatsoever on who we are going to meet and what we are going to encounter.

What Made Me Say “Ooh!”

The quiet-ness! I’d say the pace is also just right. It’s like taking a stroll in the park and you find small interesting things along the way, so you stop and examine a bunch of small wild flowers with yellow-ish petals, wondering whether you have seen similar flowers somewhere back home. (And you do have, you remember when you finally come back home and sit at the edge of your bed.)

I also like the receptionist woman, I don’t know why. 

I added this after reading some reviews on Goodreads: lots of them mentioned about how there are unnecessary scenes and how the book can be more concise if several scenes are being cut. I can see where those opinions came from, but I think that is the point of this character? From what I understand, Ren doesn’t know why his sister left him for a remote place somewhere far from him, and he also doesn’t know why his mother behaved like that towards her. 

He is lost, and I think that’s why he just let himself be led by the situations that arose around him.

(And, we can say that he is not himself during two-thirds of the book, and when he finally gets a grip of himself—of what he wants to do and what he wants to be—he leaves Akakawa, and finally continues the rest of his life as himself.)

What Made Me Say “Uh?”

Like I said in the Reading Process section, I don’t think the intention of this book is about finding out the murderer. Yet some part of me accepts how the book ends, and the other petty part is like “at least give us a single sentence that explains exactly who is the culprit!”

I began this book, expecting a murder story, and undoubtedly enjoying the self-discovery journey—but, I can’t deny that I am not satisfied with the resolution of Keiko’s death. I mean, a vague and open ending is nice and all, but I don’t think it’s nice to randomly add a character near the end of the book and say “oh, so that’s the culprit!” and make this character disappear. Well, this character is not even in the book. I remembered thinking about how there’s only a few pages left when the original ‘culprit’ is discovered, and I thought Ren was going to pursue the culprit wherever they were, but he didn’t.

Overall,

I think if this book is longer perhaps it could resolve both Ren’s inner confusement and Keiko’s murder mystery. But then again, the writing process is not easy work, so, yes /crying noises. Overall, it was a good reading journey! Three and a half stars, out of five! I enjoyed every bit of it—for me, it is definitely a page turner.

There’s an announcement of Rainbirds’ movie adaptation last year, and I’m definitely looking forward to that! I feel like the quiet and serene atmosphere in the book would be amazing on a wide screen as well.