2019, Book 16: Gasa-Gasa Girl by Naomi Hirohara

Book 16: Gasa-Gasa Girl by Naomi Hirohara

I'm not generally a fan of mystery novels.  They're formulaic, dripping with misogyny and racism and the fictional events rarely interest more their real counterparts.  I will, however, read just about anything by Naomi Hirohara.  Though The Summer of the Big Bachi and Gasa-Gasa Girl are formulaic in plot, Hirohara imbues every other aspect of the novel with a humanity both specific to southern Californian Japanese Americans and familiar to all.

The first indicator that this would be the case is the main protagonist, Mas Arai.  Is he a private investigator? No.  Is he a former police officer?  No.  Does he have any professional business whatsoever in crime?  No.  He's an aging gardener, bearing witness to seismic shifts in his profession, bearing widowerdom and bearing familial estrangement from one generation for being too Japanese, an estrangement he committed against another generation by emigrating.  This may sound unfamiliar to many, but the alienation, comfort found in an almost tribal sub-population, economic anxiety and intergenerational struggles are as common as the 99%.

Another indicator that this was a literary mystery novel was the speech.  So many authors who try to put Asian-American speech patterns into fictional characters fall on the wrong side of the believable/ching-chongery border.  Even when the accents are passably portrayed (which is rare), the content never is.  A Chinese immigrant, for instance, will almost never discuss their finances, but they'll talk your ear off about the deal they got that day on a pair of pants (look, name brand!).  Hirohara has an unfair advantage in getting Japanese immigrant speech just right, of course, being Japanese American herself; but I pity the creative that doesn't make use of all of their advantages.

One thing that totally charmed me in The Summer of the Big Bachi was the setting.  There are plenty of novels set in L.A., but few are as familiar with the odd corners outside of the Westside as I am.  The places Hirohara depicts are neither ultra-dangerous nor safe above reproach and have all their subtleties in place.  Gasa-Gasa Girl moved Mas Arai to New York, but Hirohara does make the New York places real in the same way.