Name: Amrita
Rating: 3.725 (20 reviews)
ISBN: 9780671532857

Banana Yoshimoto

Russell F. Wasden

After losing her delicate younger sister to suicide, a Japanese-American woman incurs a case of amnesia and embarks on an emotional journey of recovery, aided by her clairvoyant kid brother. By the author of Kitchen. Reprint.

Amrita

Ellie 

I thought for a moment. Isn't it strange how we unconsciously search for something that will make us cry, only when we want to, and only when we're not able to? Just thinking about it is painful. 

“When I look at the pages they give me a good feeling. I suppose I could say the whole book has a nice fragrance about it."

Now I like myself. Always. No one in this world is perfectly healthy. My loneliness was an important part of my own little universe, not some pathological disease that needs to be gotten rid of. It's something that was inside me

A celebrated actress who has died in mysterious and shocking circumstances leaves behind an unconventional extended family that includes an older sister, a woman in her twenties through whose eyes the story unfolds; a young brother who possesses mystical powers; and a fiancé who is writing a novel with uncanny parallels to his own story.'Her novels can have the effect of addictive drugs . . . Pathos, nostalgia, the sense of exquisite sadness at the fleetingness of life are key elements of beauty in Japanese aesthetics, and all are themes central to Yoshimoto's books.' The Times

ikkychan

This is it—I’m pushed to the brink of abandoning Yoshimoto’s books altogether. I’ve been continually disappointed by how her stories portray men, and with 
 Amrita
, the sense of regression is unmistakable. Compared to her debut novel Kitchen, Amrita feels like a step backwards. It offers one of the most unsettling portrayals of male infidelity and female passivity in her work. While earlier stories (Goodbye Tsugumi, Asleep) at least gesture toward emotional reckoning or critique by acknowledging the emotional toll of these relationships, Amrita lets toxic behavior slide by largely unchecked. So here’s the setup: Amrita follows Sakumi, a young woman who suffers a serious head injury after a fall. Post-surgery, she wakes up with no memory of who she was. The rest of the novel traces her internal journey to rebuild her sense of self—through old connections with her mother Yukiko, her little brother Yoshio, her cousin Mariko, her mother’s friend Junko and her best friend Eiko, and new bonds with Ryuichiro (her late sister’s boyfriend), the enigmatic singer Saseko and her partner Koizumi, a shy clairvoyant named Kaname, and her ex, Mesmer. It’s a narrative of slow healing and quiet reinvention. Or at least, it tries to be. But here’s the thing: across Yoshimoto’s body of work, her unfaithful male characters seem to get progressively worse. In Goodbye Tsugumi (1989), the father is flawed but there's an attempt to balance his familial responsibilities—his cheating is portrayed as a failure, not something romantic or excusable. In Asleep (1989), Iwanaga is stuck in emotional limbo with his comatose wife, but the protagonist is worn out by the situation, leading to some self-awareness and movement. There's tension, a reckoning, a hint of growth. But in Amrita (1994), the men are just… selfish. Shamelessly so. Ryuichiro grooms Mayu, a minor, pressures her into multiple abortions, cheats on Sakumi, and then has the audacity to accuse her of being "cold" and of “giving up” of their relationship too easily. Eiko’s married lover lets her take the fall—literally, getting stabbed—hides while she recovers, and only returns when she reaches out. And the worst part? The story doesn’t challenge this. No one is held accountable. These men walk away emotionally unscathed, and the women just… accept it. What’s going on here? What’s up with this growing conviction of letting the cheaters off, scot-free? Why are Yoshimoto’s heroines so quick to forgive? One angle to explore is how the stories reflect Japan’s gendered cultural norms—particularly the ideal of the "good woman." Literature and society in Japan have long glorified women who endure suffering in silence. The ryōsai kenbo ("good wife, wise mother") ideal still lingers. Even Yoshimoto’s supposedly modern women often embody this self-sacrificing figure. Sakumi doesn’t confront Ryuichiro about the abortions—not because she’s okay with it, but probably because she doesn’t expect anything better. It’s the quiet internalized voice that says, “Maybe this is all I deserve.” Eiko forgives her lover not because he redeemed himself, but because his return validates her suffering. If he came back, it must mean something, right? Another way to read this is through grief and emotional dependency. The relationships in Amrita are tangled in loss—Sakumi and Ryuichiro are bound by Mayu’s death, and Eiko clings to her lover because she’s adrift in her own emptiness. These women don’t forgive out of love—they do it because they’re terrified of being alone. It’s less about weakness and more about desperation. And that desperation is what makes the story so painful. So here’s the uncomfortable question: is Yoshimoto aware of how damaging these dynamics are, or is she unintentionally romanticizing them? There are moments that suggest she is aware. Ryuichiro isn’t charming—he’s pathetic. Sakumi’s numbness after the betrayal could easily be read as dissociation, not acceptance. Eiko’s knife wound is so extreme it borders on satire—almost cartoonish in its absurdity. These could be subtle critiques, quiet signals that something is very wrong here. But if that’s the case, then why is there no consequence? Why does no one yell, walk away, or demand more? The absence of outrage feels like complicity. Yoshimoto’s signature prose—dreamy, melancholic, a little detached—has always made suffering feel strangely beautiful. But here, it becomes a problem. It smooths over pain until it feels natural, even inevitable. The men never reflect on their actions. Ryuichiro never questions himself—he just sulks until Sakumi folds. That’s not catharsis. That’s erasure. And that’s what makes Amrita so jarring, especially when compared to Yoshimoto’s earlier heroines. In Asleep, the protagonist "wakes up" from emotional stasis. In Kitchen, Mikage processes grief and finds a new form of independence. But Sakumi doesn’t grow. She adapts. She doesn't reject Ryuichiro’s betrayal—she absorbs it. Her forgiveness isn't a sign of strength; it’s a symptom of resignation. Even the rich, complex relationships she develops—with her brother Yoshio, and with friends like Saseko, Koizumi, Kaname, and Mesmer—aren’t enough to pull her out of this pattern. Those connections show glimpses of a deeper, more fulfilling life. But in the end, they’re not enough to help her stand up to the one person who should’ve protected her. She regains her memories, maybe even her identity, but loses her voice. Is this realism? Or just fatalism? That’s the discomfort Amrita leaves behind. Perhaps this is Yoshimoto’s darkest mirror yet—one where women don’t just endure, but disappear into the needs of broken men.

Sarah Sammis

I tried my best to lose myself in this book but I just couldn't. It didn't captivate me as much as the other book by this author did. Perhaps it was a result of the long and stressful work week that hindered my reading of this book. I don't know. I think sometime in the future I'll have to give this book a second go.

Winona 

This is probably the first time the Goodreads star rating system has genuinely reflected my feelings towards a book: "It was Ok." That's how I felt about  Amrita  -- it was just an OK book. It's strange, now that I've finished  Amrita , the experience of reading it seeming to fade away altogether. Akin to Sakumi's memories after she split her head upon on a flight of stairs. Maybe it has to do with how, despite the jewels in the prose that shone like a beautiful dream, so much of this book was just so distasteful.

Be careful, reader, for now I shall delve into the reasons why I thought that "Amrita" was just an "OK" book.

[TW Suicide]

As someone who has struggled with crippling chronic depression, and has also attempted to end her own life, this book's treatment of suicide has probably got to be one of the worst I have ever come across. Suicide in literature rarely tends to be treated with respect.  13 Reasons Why  glorifies it by treating it as a tool for revenge, John Green romanticises it, and others just demonise the person who has committed the act. I haven't read  The Bell Jar  (yet), but from her poetry, I can tell that only Plath really got it. The reasons behind it, and the psyche that a suicidal person tends to inhabit when it's all that's on their mind. Probably because of personal reasons. 

In  Amrita , Yoshimto does something extremely offensive: she romanticises it in some aspects, she demonises the person who took their own life, she cheapens it, and, what's worse, she acts like it's not a big deal throughout most of the narrative. In fact, Mayu, whose suicide is essentially what sets off the chain of muddled, confusing, misty events in Sakumi's (her sister, and the excessively verbose narrator) life. Everything we know about Mayu is through the eyes of Sakumi, and Sakumi is the litmus test that she holds everyone against. We only know about Mayu's personality in comparison to Sakumi - it's understandable, because we never meet Mayu, she's dead from the beginning of the book - but it's also problematic because Sakumi does not seem to care about the reasons why her sister chose to end her own life. She dwells on her sister's glamorous lifestyle from time-to-time, and just when the reader thinks that maybe Sakumi has come to a realisation about her sister, we get gross resentment and a rather ugly vindication of a woman who ended her life.

Why?

Well...because, as if suicide wasn't already dramatic enough for Yoshimoto's bizarre story, Sakumi is sleeping with her sister's boyfriend. The very same boyfriend who most likely forced Mayu to have two abortions because he's a manipulative, self-serving, dickhead of a writer. It's really sickening how no one - not even the mother in this book - seems concerned by the fact that Sakumi is in a relationship with her  dead sister's  boyfriend. No one finds it suspicious that Ryuchiro could just move on from one sister to the next? He lived with Mayu. He was there when she was driving herself down the spiral that eventually killed her. But not once do we hear him express regret over not noticing earlier and doing something to stop her. Nope. He's sad about it for a bit - but in a way broody, narcissistic, chauvinistic poets are: he's sad about it because it fuels his inspiration. He's probably a terrible writer. 

I kept reading for two reasons:
1. Because I don't have it in me to abandon books.
2. Because I hoped that somewhere there would be a moment of self-actualization for Sakumi.

I felt like she was a passive figure in her own life. Just drifting my here to there. Even though she talks about living actively, somehow she's just a non-entity. I could very well be missing the point, after all this book does feature ghosts! However, despite her constant dwelling, her ridiculously verbose and fantastical manner of speech, her whimsy, etc, she had no personality whatsoever. Actually, most of the people in this book were pretty much non-entities. It's funny, because Yoshimoto spends so much time describing just how cool, quirky, and different the characters in  Amrita  are (going as far as to give many of them different kinds of psychic powers) all of them just felt flat. They didn't feel anything like real people. They didn't talk like real people. They sounded like a bunch of upper-middle class (who are able to easily pack up and fly wherever they want to because they're well off) drunks who thought that making pop culture references, and listening to Elvis and The Beatles, makes for a personality trait. They were all just various shades of obnoxious non-entities. 

Except for Yoshio. I liked Yoshio. Yoshio probably gives this book it's second star. He felt real. He reacted like how a person - especially a vulnerable child in such a dysfunctional household - would react to a series of tragic events that occur one after the other. I wanted to protect Yoshio, get him outside of that awful house, away from his selfish mother, and his pathetic sister, and into a family that doesn't think that seeks to comfort an eight year old struggling to process grief. 

He was probably the only thing I liked by this disjointed, obnoxious running commentary of a book. 

Hey...now that I mention it, doesn't this review kind of come across like that too?

SF. Sutcliffe 

🍊

Meniah

Finn Salter

Cuando publicamos en 1991 Kitchen (Andanzas 151), de la entonces jovencísima Banana Yoshimoto, intuíamos ya en su escritura el talento de una buena narradora, pero no podíamos imaginar que, diez años después, se convertiría en una de las más prestigiosas autoras de la literatura japonesa actual, con un clamoroso éxito de público en su país y, gracias a las numerosas traducciones, en el mundo entero. Amrita es una de sus novelas más sofisticadas y con mayor riqueza de matices, que demuestra que, en efecto, nos encontramos ante una novelista que ha alcanzado la madurez literaria, y que posee un originalísimo mundo propio. Cuando muere un ser querido, su entorno queda trágicamente afectado, en particular cuando todo sugiere que ha sido un suicidio. Tras la muerte misteriosa de Mayu, una joven y famosa actriz, Ryuichiro, su compañero, decide emprender un largo viaje para olvidar. Desde diferentes lugares cuenta sus andanzas en las cartas que envía a Sakumi, la hermana mayor de Mayu, en las que utiliza un inusitado tono de familiaridad y cariño. Sakumi, que no sabe si éste era el estilo habitual empleado por él para dirigirse a su hermana, sucumbe al amor, sobre todo tras sufrir un accidente en el que pierde parte de la memoria. La nueva Sakumi, convertida ya en novia de Ryuichiro, sorprende a todos, porque en ella destellan señales de una segunda personalidad, propia de quienes han estado alguna vez cerca de la muerte...

Amrita

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