The Love We Share Without Knowing (Paperback)

by Christopher Barzak (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Barzak's accomplished novel-in-stories dwells on people dealing with life's sorrows through somewhat tenuous connections. Set in Japan, the narratives focus on protagonists from the country and travelers in search of a new life, as in Realer Than You, in which 16-year-old Elijah Fulton longs for his native America while struggling to fit into his new surroundings outside of Tokyo. The Suicide Club is made up of four young adults on the fringe of Japanese society attempting to make sense of their lives, while Sleeping Beauties concerns, albeit sappily, an American teacher and his Japanese lover; the narrator loses his identity through total immersion in his lover's life, yet it's the slow return to self that is even more devastating. If You Can Read This You're Too Close centers on a disillusioned, selfish young man whose life is changed after a blind man sees him. Barzak's perceptive writing evinces the fragile and overwhelming desire for meaning and love. (Nov.)
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Review
"From the frantic streets of Tokyo to the surreal silence of rural Japan, Christopher Barzak spins the familiar yarn of the everyday world into a magical universe. Following in the themes of his stunning debut, One for Sorrow, Barzak once again tackles loneliness and longing, and elegantly blurs the divide between the living and the dead. The Love We Share Without Knowing is haunting, strange, and utterly surprising from the first page to the last."—Michelle Richmond, author of The Year of Fog and No One You Know

“Barzak’s sympathy and humor, his awareness, his easeful vernacular storytelling, are extraordinary.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

“Exquisite and mysterious…From its beautiful title to its sad and haunted characters, The Love We Share Without Knowing limns the depths of the human need to be loved–and to be truly understood and accepted by those we love. A beautiful, enchanted book.”—Booklist, starred review

“In this follow-up to his notable debut, One for Sorrow, Barzak offers an otherworldly novel made up of linked short stories set in contemporary Japan. Barzak’s varied players spin their stories of love, grief, and growing up in first-person narratives that artfully collide with each other to stunning emotional effect. In one narrative thread, a teenage boy lost in Tokyo is led home by an ethereal girl in a fox costume; he later discovers she is dead. The childhood best friend of the fox girl is a casualty of her planned group suicide, but not in the way she anticipates. The author finds rich territory in situating his characters in places steeped in personal loss and letting them fumble toward acceptance of their own frailties.” — Library Journal


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (November 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055338564X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553385649
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #745,595 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars deep but depressing look at loneliness , December 5, 2008

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In Ami, Japan, sixteen year old American Elijah Fulton is bored. His only outlet is running. On an isolated path he meets a red fox who seems to imply he should follow; he does and ends up in a sacred circle. Soon after still suffering ennui, Elijah without telling anyone takes the train to Tokyo. After spending the day there, he tries to find the train back to the town where he, his parents and younger sister reside, but fails; no one seems to help him until a teen calling herself Midori helps him as she is going there too. After leaving the train at Ami they walk together until she heads to her father's farm while he goes home. Later he learns Midori committed suicide thirteen years ago.

In Tokyo, Hitumi meets Kazuko in a restaurant after each of their respective dates let them down. Soon afterward Asami and Tadashi the only male of the four form a suicide club pact that reminds Hitumi of her late friend Midori.

More a series of somewhat related vignettes rather than short stories or a novel, THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING is a deep look at loneliness and its twin need to belong to others. Christopher Barzak makes the case that the human need for companionship is a basic requirement just a notch less critical than physical survival needs like food, water and shelter. Well written with more episodes than those above, but somewhat depressing because part of belonging could lead to negative consequences like forming a suicide club pact. Fans who appreciate a powerful character study that gets into the essence of human need (think of the Maslow's hierarchy) will relish this engaging but gloomy glimpse into the human psyche.

Harriet Klausner

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sharing the love, March 1, 2009

By	N. M. Deniro - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In this second novel by Christopher Barzak, readers will connect not only with familiar characters but with characters from far away. It is what I like to call a "global" novel, rather than one that speaks only to one country or region. It's a novel set in Japan, with characters both Japanese and American, as well as a few other nationalities. Each chapter is a story in and of itself. Some are told in the first person, almost as if the characters are sharing the secret stories of their lives with the reader, creating an amazing feeling of intimacy. Other chapters are told in the third person omniscient, in which the reader feels as if they are watching these characters on a movie screen. And other chapters are told in other ways, as in the third chapter, when it seems at first to be a monologue until you read to its end and discover that it isn't a monologue so much as an "address" from one character in the novel to another. The effect of this variation of storytelling perspectives is like a symphony, a variety of instruments or voices coming together to create something more than they could be alone, which is sort of the theme of the novel, I think. It's beautiful, and the effect it creates builds as you get farther into the book and allow the voices to mingle, as they build layers of meaning and tone.

But aside from that description of the way the novel is written, what's more important is the beautiful yet sad depiction of life as we know it, in many countries, not just Japan. This a gently existential book about the stark loneliness of being surrounded by people, of trying to understand others and be understood, it's about failing, it's about the search for one's place in the world, and the always mingling worlds of things and spirits. You can't teach Barzak's approach in a creative writing workshop or MFA program. It's not the sort of writing that shows itself off, it's not about displaying his abilities so much as giving a reader a variety of ways to read, and it manages to quietly amaze without begging you to notice your own amazement.

It's a book about falling in love, falling out of love, losing someone you love, and learning how to live with their absence. It's about living.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engrossing and beautiful rumination on the many ways we love, February 27, 2009

By	Kristine Harrington "Kris" (Youngstown, OH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Some books are regarded as having more worth than others because of when and by whom they were written. We treat with skepticism modern writers with their non-linear reflections and questioning rather than proclaiming style and hold up anything written by dead white guys from days of yore (aka, the classics). We see biography and history regarded as more valid than fiction, and lately, and even within the fiction genre, we find multiple sub-genres: romance, realism, magical realism, sci-fi, speculative fiction, chick lit, and you get the idea.

But with these simple categorizations, we miss, well, we miss a lot. Christopher Barzak, has written two novels that defy these kinds of easy genre-based descriptions. The most recent, The Love We Share Without Knowing, is particularly difficult to pin down. This is its strength.

If you're looking for a typical love story: boy meets girl, is confronted with a significant obstacle to her affections, overcomes obstacle, love wins in the end, then this is not the book for you (you want something by Nicholas Sparks). Instead Barzak's novel doesn't provide us with easy or even any answers about love. We get questions in a world where the dead and living hold company together and where people drift between these two worlds in dreams and even in the guise of a fox. Love becomes dark and grasping, lonely and desperate, and it refuses to be silenced by death. And yet the darkness doesn't exist just for darkness's sake but rather to make room for the light because in the midst of the lonliness and death we come to realize what is at the heart of the novel's overlapping stories. The ghosts are supernatural manifestations of a truth that is presented as a hunch...that we leave in others' lives our traces, our love, in more ways than we will ever fully realize.