The Healing Family

Recently, I found Kenzaburo Oe's novel called The healing family. In the book Oe tells about the life of his son Hikari who got brain tumour when he was born.

Hikari's parents decided that the tumour will be removed, though there was a risk that the surgery could fail and Hikari would never recover. But now this over thirty years old composer is doing pretty well, despite the epileptic attacks what he sometimes has.

The Nobel Prize winner and author of A Personal Matter and The Silent city and M/T, Kenzaburo Oe writes about his personal feelings and insights related to his son, Hikari.

Hikari Oe, composer, was born in 1963 with a major malformation of his brain. Doctors predicted he would never become anything more than a vegetable. Despite the circumstances, Oe's family brought him up with encouraging and nurturing environment. Hikari Oe soon became a contributing member to the world of classical music - his two CD's became successful.

In Healing Family, Kenzaburo Oe writes with humility and warm humor. The book has a very positive insight to life, through the difficulties Oe gains deeper insight into his life and through the joys and discomforts his family encountered. Eventually the book tells more about Kenzaburo Oe himself than his son. He writes about Hikari and his accomplishments with a pride of a father, but between the lines you can feel his honest and deep compassion towards his own son. Oe wrote in his book that the first words of Hikari Oe were "This is a Water Rail", meaning the small wetland bird.

Oe has written about the sorrows and satisfactions of being a parent of handicapped child before, especially in A Personal Matter, but this book is not fiction. This is perhaps his most intimate, personal work.

In Healing Family Oe also writes about his encounters in literary world, his friends and associates, and his family's trip to Salzburg.

The book is collection of Oe's essays, and it is very beautifully crafted, also the Finnish translation is very well made and there are no apparent errors. Although there are many bashing reviews of the Healing Family, I must say I just love this, because of it's mature appeal and honesty, and a sheer message to the readers. Life is wonderful, and entirely what you make of it.

Oe's wife, Yukari, wrote the last essay, which closes the book well, this is a heartwarming and everlasting piece of my personal library. She also contributed made the illustration for the book.

Kenzaburo Oe is born in Shikoku's island, in Ehime's prefecture, in year 1935. He started his career as a novelist from year 1958 and he has regularly published novels, shortstories and essays. He got Nobel's prize in year 1994.

Comments