Honeybees and Distant Thunder: The million copy award-winning Japanese bestseller about the enduring power of great friendship

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Tender, cruel, compelling,Honeybees and Distant Thunder is the unflinching story of love, courage and rivalry. We meet a lot of people, but never for a second did I lose count of who’s who and I was invested in all of them from the start. Ultimately, Honeybees and Distant Thunder is a story that could be described as a love letter to music and nature.

She sees it as an artistic expression and conversation now, which seals her fate in the competition but grows her as a musician. I would've kicked out some POVs of people that weren't the main characters and I would've shorten the competition as well.He gave up his dream of becoming a professional piano player but sees her chance to come back with a splash. Mas senti-me tomada e levada ao céu por este livro, que descreve um concurso internacional de piano no Japão, a partir do ponto de vista de alguns membros do júri e também dos concorrentes (cada um com os seus bloqueios, medos ou inseguranças a ultrapassar) mas sobretudo a afinidade entre a música e a natureza e a forma como a música nos pode fazer sentir, em contacto connosco próprios, com os outros e com a nossa história. Hard to pinpoint where exactly this slipped from the heights of success it enjoyed in Japan, but it definitely lost something. Reconozco que en algunas ocasiones las descripciones de las interpretaciones me han resultado algo repetitivas.

I really can't remember the last time I read a book that had me invested from start to finish or a book I read every night and finished in a week. The story starts with a prelude in Paris where 16-year-old Jin Kazama is auditioning to participate in a piano competition. Synaesthetic and devout, it locates such meaning in the evolving work of four central talents: Akashi, who at twenty-eight is aging out of being able to consider music as a career path; Jin, untested on the contest circuit, whose gifts rise from somewhere primal and crystalline; and Aya and Masaru, who met music together as children, lost each other, and are delighted to reconnect on Yoshigae’s stage. In 2003, after overcoming a fear of flying, she visited the UK and Ireland, and later lived in South America, where she reported for NHK television on Mayan and Incan culture.There’s just something about this book and its unabashed reverence for the power of music and the love these performers have for their art that really got to me. I picked this one up already knowing the likelihood I would enjoy the read was high, having grown up in a musical household and studying music myself. Skupiła się na każdym utworze, każdemu wyznaczyła zadanie, każdy opowiadał inną historię, w których to pisarzami byli bohaterowie, młodzi pianiści. Ambitious Japanese Peruvian Masaru Carlos Levi Anatole, a Juilliard student, knew Aya when they were both kids in Tokyo. Riku Onda stworzyła opowieść utkaną z nut, emocji, smutku, strachu, biedy, bogactwa, rywalizacji, przyjaźni – autorka chwyciła świat za dźwięk i to jest bardzo mocny uścisk.

Each contestant was wonderfully drawn, and I felt moved, as if I were truly hearing each and every musical piece. Even readers with no prior affection for the works played in the competition should be tantalized into taking a listen by Onda's descriptions of the music and its effects on listeners; one piece sounds like “a fluffy, plumped-up quilt, cushiony, as well as slightly damp” and another like a “thick, rough-hewn log.

Onda’s musical novel Honeybees and Distant Thunder was a smash hit when it first came out in 2017, snapping up both the Naoki Prize and Japan Booksellers’ Award the same year. The glittering, high-stakes world of classical piano competitions is not a place people often find themselves: It takes incredible dedication and expertise to gain entry to such a realm. Setting the novel during the two weeks of the competition both gives the novel a solid structure and adds suspense, and the author's clear passion for and knowledge of the classical repertoire shine through.