The Sweetest Fruits by Monique Truong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Her prose is the finest. The three women who constitute the voices of the novel are worlds apart, united only by the person of Lafcadio Hearn. Their different voices create a space around him that is intricate, deep, and true. The novel tells Hearn’s story in its own way, and made me contemplate the significance of the women more than the person of the famous man. He is there but he is seen, never entered, by the book, and the women who keep him and care for him – and sometimes abandon him – are echoes of something deeper and more tragic. I was struck in different ways by all three but particularly by the stained glass effect of their juxtaposition. The wife in Japan was marvelous, and that section of the book accomplishes something remarkable, a quiet story of something like peace and contentment. I would read anything Truong writes.