１リットルの涙
Japan, Memoir, Non-Fiction
Aya Kito
Rizzoli
1986
eBook
197
Japanese
April 21, 2023 April 22, 2023
10 Books in Translation in 2023, Reading by the Numbers, Translated Book Goals
In the vast Asian world, Kito Aya's diary has enjoyed unstoppable success: published in the late 1980s in Japan, it has sold over a million copies. A crowded audience for the first-person story of a fifteen-year-old girl who inspired and enchanted an entire continent. Aya talks about ten years of her life, she talks about adolescence and the beginning of adulthood, a life like many others, but without perspective, an existence undermined by illness, that's the difference. And here is enclosed the power of these pages: in the rebellion, in the irony, in the fragility that turns into strength, which make Aya a symbol, a cult figure. Because, beyond her particular condition, she managed to shout in a clear voice what it means to grow up, and to count how many tears it takes to face defeats.
About the book
Heartbreaking story of a girl who is diagnosed with a rare and degenerative disease.
Book cover isn’t the English version, I used it only because the title is in English. Details of the book are the Italian version. I don’t think there is an English version of this book, please let me know if there is.
What I think
I don’t know how to rate this book either. How do you rate a diary?
The title does not reflect the tears shed by the characters in the book, but those shed by me at the end. I don’t know how much I cried, not reading Aya’s diary, no. Perhaps only in one case did I shed a few tears, but in the end when her mum speaks, but above all when the doctor explains what Aya had. At first I didn’t want to know about the disease because I wanted to find out with Aya, then when the first symptoms appeared, I couldn’t resist (I more or less understood the type of disease) and I read the author’s biography. Having never heard of that disease, I researched it so while reading I was prepared. I didn’t know that the doctor would eventually explain what Aya was suffering from.
This kind of disease is terrible. Rare and genetic diseases are all terrible in isolation, but one that affects the nervous system is perhaps the worst of all. But you have to live with a genetic disease to really know what it means to have a “terrible” disease, everything is subjective, isn’t it?
I don’t know what I would have done as Aya. Being vigilant until the end must be tiring, you get to a point where you say “enough”. We will never know if Aya thought it, she just couldn’t communicate. But from what I read it seems that she wanted to fight to the end.
The fact that she didn’t know what to do after high school, her place in the world, and not finding the answer left me blown away. How do you not know? I hope that in the end she understood that her place, her job was to leave this testimony for people who suffer like her.
I think my litre of tears reached its peak when the doctor explained how the little girl was able to give hope to people who have had a stroke or half paralysis and did not want to do rehabilitation exercises. This used to be your place in the world, Aya.
(ah niagara falls opened talking about this fact).
Aya’s disease was genetic, so her siblings could also have the disease, but they are healthy. I don’t think the little ones developed the disease, but from a medical point of view I’d like to know.
Do I recommend this book? Certainly. It’s hard to read especially the end so I have to give this warning, it’s not for everyone.
