As part of Lit Society’s Book Review Program, members are reading and reviewing books by independent writers we think deserve more attention. This review reflects one reader’s honest experience and aims to spotlight exciting new voices.
Big Take? A heartbreaking story about the distance between loving someone and preparing to lose them, Beautiful Distance is for readers who find beauty in life’s most ordinary and extraordinary moments.
- Would You Recommend It? Yes
- Book Club Worthy? Yes
- Would You Read This Author Again? Yes
- Did It Change How You See Something? Yes
- Is It More Plot or Ideas? Ideas
- Pace: Slow
- Emotional Impact: Lingering
- Best For: Wanting to think about love, care, and the moments that make up a life
- Skimmable or Demands Attention? Skimmable, but I actually read it twice and the first time I skimmed it but then I kept thinking about it so I read it again and lingered on every word. Each experience was very different.
- Would You Reread It? Yes, and already have!
I distinctly remember the moment it hit me that I'm mortal. That I'm going to die, and there is no escaping that fact. It was quite literally like an on-and-off switch. One day, I was going about my life with virtually no fear of death, and the next I was questioning everything about my life, and even more so, the end of it. Not just for myself, but for the people I love.
I really wish I had had Nao-Cola Yamazaki's Beautiful Distance to read and to hold when I was going through that realization for the first time. Don’t get me wrong, I still think about death constantly, but I've learned to manage those thoughts a little better. And, unexpectedly, this book gave me a lot of peace.
From the cover, the word beautiful immediately stood out to me. I have friends who have recently lost their parents, know people caring for loved ones with terminal illnesses, and have even had a near-death experience of my own. When I think about these experiences, I'm struck by how often the word beautiful comes up in conversations. Not necessarily to describe the illness or the loss itself, but the moments surrounding them. The kindness of someone showing up. The conversations you might not otherwise have had. The ordinary moments that suddenly feel extraordinary, and the ones you wish you could hold on to forever. Beautiful Distance, translated into English by Charlotte Goff and published by SJP Lit, captures so much of that.
Told from the perspective of a husband caring for his wife who is dying of cancer, the novel moves between the present and memories of their life together. It's a relatively quiet story, without an elaborate plot or dramatic revelations, so it may not be for everyone. Rather than offering a page-turning account of what happens next, Yamazaki invites us into the narrator's thoughts as he reflects on his marriage, his wife, and the life they've shared.
Near the beginning, the narrator says, “If there's a way to live happily without thinking about the future, I haven't found it yet.” I kept coming back to that sentence. I think most of us build our happiness around the idea of a future: the trips we'll take, the milestones we'll celebrate, the people we'll grow old with, and all the little things we assume we'll have time to do. But what happens when that future becomes uncertain, or when you know it won't look the way you imagined? How do you continue making plans, finding joy, and enjoying the ordinary routines of a shared life when you know there may not be much time left?
That's what I appreciated most about this book. It doesn't try to offer some grand explanation of death or tell us how we're supposed to feel about it. It doesn't pretend that love makes losing someone easier. Instead, it makes room for the complicated emotions that come with loving someone who may not be here much longer. There is certainly sadness (and I really wish I hadn't finished it on a public bus), but also tenderness, reflection, humor, and warmth. It reminds us that a life can still be full of happiness, even when the future feels impossibly short or nonexistent.
I don't think this is necessarily an easy book to read, especially if you've experienced loss or are watching someone you love navigate an illness. But I do think it's a rewarding one. It reminded me that thinking about death doesn't have to mean living in fear of it. Acknowledging how finite our lives are can make us more aware of the beauty in the time we do have. Maybe the goal isn't to stop thinking about the future entirely, but to make sure we're not so consumed by it that we forget to enjoy the life happening right in front of us. We spend so much time trying to outrun the inevitable, when the truth is, we're not going to.
Favorite Lines?
“Bus terminal… Terminal.. There’s that word again. I roll it around on my tongue. It makes me smile, a little, to think that we give the same name to a place like this and the final stages of an illness.”
“If only I could spend an eternity here in this hospital, looking after her.”
“I wonder what’s making her want to say thank you so much. Is it because that’s how she’s feeling or because saying thank you is a way of staying true - right to the very end?”
Recommended Media?
📚Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
🎵 Fourth of July by Sufjan Stevens
🎵 The Book of Love by The Magnetic Fields
Interested in purchasing Beautiful Distance? Support Bond & Grace and purchase the book via Bookshop here.
