The first review – at least the first I’ve seen – came out recently in Japonica on Medium.com. It’s always nice to encounter positive responses to my novels, and this one, thankfully, fits in that category. For a look at it, please see the URL below.
"A multi-sided geometry of love and pain set in rural Ishikawa." –DC Palter, Japonica
https://medium.com/japonica-publication/the-heron-catchers-a-novel-by-david-joiner-d8c0a844c52b
“Joiner manages to craft a nuanced story…[It’s] a Kawabata novel, The Sound of the Mountain, that comes to mind when reading Joiner’s work…Kanazawa is an enjoyable look at an interesting city and the problems faced when people have different expectations.” —TonysReadingList.wordpress.com
For the full review, please check it out here:
https://tonysreadinglist.wordpress.com/2023/10/30/kanazawa-by-david-joiner-review/
Although my novel Kanazawa was barely mentioned, I was surprised to see it appear at all at the end of a nice article in National Geographic Traveller (UK) about the city of Kanazawa where we live. I had no idea that anyone from NGT had read my work...and liked it enough to recommend it!
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A guide to Kanazawa, the next city break for Kyoto-lovers
Forged by samurai, geishas and Edo-era feudal clans, the elegant garden city of Kanazawa is a quieter alternative to Kyoto for those seeking traditional Japanese culture.
BY DANIEL STABLES
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/a-guide-to-kanazawa
Even though the publication of The Heron Catchers is just over two months away, it's still nice to be able to post something (relatively) new written about my last novel, Kanazawa. The link here is to a June 2023 review on Booklogia.com.
The review continues beyond the first paragraph captured in the screenshot below: https://en.booklogia.com/i-felt-it-was-more-like-japanese-literature-than-anything-written-by-any-japanese-author-c3c57f85a56e
By Daiya Hashimoto: "I felt it was more like Japanese literature than anything written by any Japanese author."
Blurbs for The Heron Catchers (publication date: November 21, 2023) are starting to trickle in, and I thought I'd include below the five that I'm fortunate now to have:
“David Joiner’s The Heron Catchers introduces us to the quiet green abundance of the Japanese mountains, the slow beauty of pottery, and the pain of love ended. We follow wounded characters, Sedge and Mariko, as they learn to heal after each has suffered from devastating betrayals. Like the herons they ultimately rescue from injuries incurred by natural and human calamities, they too strike out at those who seek to help them. Not unlike the wandering poet Matsuo Basho who steps into the frame of the story here and there, Joiner offers flashes of insights as sharp and beautiful as a heron taking flight. Readers will find in this elegiac, imaginative work, space for reflection and discovery.”
—Rebecca Copeland, author of The Kimono Tattoo, co-editor of Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch
"An intimate, rewarding novel of people linked by misfortune who search for redemption, wholeness, and purpose. Joiner evokes his protagonist’s inner world vividly among descriptions of the life, culture, festivities, and natural environment of a small hot-spring town near Kanazawa. The Heron Catchers is an engrossing sojourn in one of Japan’s most charming off-the-beaten-path destinations."
—Jeffrey Angles, translator of Hiromi Itō’s The Thorn Puller and author of My International Date Line (Winner of the Yomiuri Prize for Literature)
"The Heron Catchers is at once a novel about a particular place, but is also a novel for us all, as our fates and feelings are intertwined with the natural world. Joiner's deeply felt and sensitive rendering of the inner lives of men and women in midlife, who are more affected by the place they live than they are aware, shifts in subtle waves, like the ocean that borders the town of Kanazawa where much of the novel is set. Closely observed and with care paid to emotional nuances, Joiner has written a book about adult life, and the endless striving we feel for meaningful connection."
—Marie Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey and the forthcoming The Tree Doctor: A Novel
"This slow burn of a novel sears itself into your consciousness with equal parts tension and poignancy. The Heron Catchers skillfully captures one blended, broken family's experience of growth and healing amidst the beauty and precariousness of Kanazawa's natural world."
—Leza Lowitz, author of In Search of the Sun: One Woman's Quest to Find Family in Japan
“Joiner reels the reader in with characteristic fine plotting, carefully crafted writing, vivid imagery and descriptions of life in the Japanese countryside, and a tone of authenticity belonging to a writer who knows and loves Japan. A riveting and worthy follow-up to Kanazawa.”
—Amy Chavez, The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island
That’s all for now. More updates later…
Over the last two days, I participated in a series of events sponsored by the city of Kanazawa to help promote it as a destination for cultural travel. The two-day itinerary included such Kanazawa stops as Coil restaurant, DT Suzuki Museum, Maida Silk Dyeing Atelier, Kaikaro Tea House, the Kanazawa Museum of Architecture, Shijimaya Honpo Samurai and Merchant House, Café Kenroku-tei at Kenrokuen Garden, Omicho Market, and the Nomura Samurai House.
Even though I live in Kanazawa and have explored the city’s culture fairly deeply, it’s always an honor and privilege to delve deeper again into it when the chance arises. Many thanks to the city’s organizers who invited us and created such a fun and interesting itinerary!
I finally went to Shimohondamachi (金沢下本多町), Kanazawa, to find the location of the cover image to my novel. Although I think I was able to locate it, as with most places 100 years old in Japan, the street is almost unrecognizable now.
The second photo shows the Shimohondamachi area of Kanazawa today, between the Great People of Kanazawa Memorial Museum and the Ishikawa International Salon, where in 1921 Kawase Hasui rendered this spot as part of his second collection of paintings in his series Souvenirs of Travels.
You can match where the walls in the woodblock print curve with the curve in the same (widened) road in my photo. Also, where the telephone pole is in the print, a lamppost now stands. Finally, the four rows of rocks in the wall in the photo could well have been three rows in the painting 102 years ago. Unfortunately, the beautiful trees along the road are long gone, and the same could almost be said for young women in kimono holding traditional sun parasols.
Photos 3-5 show a newly published book in Japanese by Daiya Hashimoto titled Immerse Yourself in English. Subtitled, “You Can Master English in 10,000 Hours,” it includes recommendations of 30 books in English to read. I’m honored for Kanazawa to be among those 30 books!
Stone Bridge Press has just entered my third novel, The Heron Catchers, into their catalog for 2023 releases. The novel’s setting is again Ishikawa prefecture, and though it starts off in Kanazawa, it takes places primarily in the village of Sugatani-machi in Yamanaka Onsen, where my wife and I bought an akiya, had it renovated, and now spend time there whenever we get the chance.
It’s scheduled to be published on November 21st and is already available for pre-order in the usual places. Here’s the publisher’s link:
https://www.stonebridge.com/catalog-2020/The-Heron-Catchers
I’m now at work on a third novel that’s also set in Ishikawa prefecture – Kanazawa again, and possibly Katayamazu Onsen, which is very near Yamanaka Onsen – that as yet remains untitled. After that one’s done, I need to go north for something set on the Noto Peninsula, I think, or something along the Sea of Japan...