These connected stories about the effects on a multi-generational Japanese family of World War II, what preceded it, and what followed it, show how what we think of as history was once an uncertain present moment with choices to be made, choices that can be looked at from multiple perspectives, choices that ripple and continue to unfold well into what will be the future. The stories start out and then continue well-grounded in the characters' lives, and I was greatly enjoying the book, but they become increasingly philosophical and finally fanciful by the end, and I found myself enjoying these later ones less.

When Serizawa focuses on characters, the writing is strong. Ayumi, for instance, is perceptively drawn in the first story slipping into dementia as an older woman while recalling staying behind in California as a teenager when her father left to return to Japan in 1913, staying with the slightly older son of a white landowner, a family friend and love interest. When America shut its borders in 1924 to Asians amidst rising anti-Japanese hostility, "she'd ceased to be Robert's romantic commitment and become instead his permanent liability."

Ayumi's brothers remain in Japan and feature in two of the most compelling stories. Sadao, a doctor, agreed to work in Japan's biological weapons and testing program during WWII, justifying it to himself as saving more Japanese lives than it would cost of enemy lives. After the war, he wrestles with how much guilt he should bear, versus those in authority who put him in that place. Annual reunions with a couple of fellow doctors don't help:

Our annual meals seem to have done them good, churning up old soil mineralized by the years, the new exposure letting them breathe. I, however, find myself hurtled back to people and places lost to time but not lost to me. At my age it is time that is present, its physicality reminding me of the finality of all our choices, made and lived.

Guilt and choices made feature strongly again in Ayumi's youngest brother Masaharu's and his wife's story. Set in the post-surrender occupation of Japan, a subway ride leads to a fascinating conversation among strangers.

Masaharu wondered what these women would be saying if Japan had won the war; victors could justify anything, and hadn't they thrown themselves into the war effort just months before? The man behind him clucked but didn't reply. His wife said, "Didn't we all contribute to this war? I certainly didn't do enough to prevent it."... Surprisingly, it was the panpan prostitute in the Western-style dress who broke the silence. "But we were deceived, weren't we? We were tricked by the Emporer."

By the ninth story however, Serizawa shifts to focus more heavily on abstract philosophical questions about belonging, time, choices, and fate, which can seem like they would have been better as essays than fashioned into short stories. One leans heavily on an analysis of a Borges story, which is quite a shift from her earlier character-driven stories. The final two stories are set in an increasingly dystopian future and really have nothing to do with the specific Japanese perspective context of the previous stories, though they could be considered connected in philosophical theme. Unfortunately though I didn't find them greatly interesting.

The first 2/3 of the book is really excellent then, the last third I could have skipped. ( )

A series of linked stories about the Japanese experience of WWII and its aftermath, and really a knockout. The stories range from 1913 to 15 years from now, exploring the reverberations of the war on one family, and wow—really ambitious, and Serizawa does a great job with it. She humanizes the horrors of war effectively, and some of the stories are just wrenching, but very much worth reading. A few bits that were a little rough around the edges—one that interrogated a Borges story as a big plot component that bogged down a bit in its thought-exercise-ness, but still fascinating overall, and I'm glad she aimed high with this one. It's 100% different from anything else I read this year. ( )

Why do I keep choosing to read such hard books, books that wring my heart, cause my eyes to burn, and challenge my comfort with things I wish I did not know?

In this case, my husband heard of the book on the radio and recommended I look into it. It was publication day, but I was granted my request for the galley.

I really had little idea of the Japanese people's WWII experiences other than America's internment camps and the effect of the Atom bomb. The war divided families, soldiers endured horrors and then were pariahs, women sold their bodies to put food on the table, doctors were forced to perform horrible experiments for the war effort.

Extraordinary and profound, Inheritors encapsulates a family's history over generations. You won't be the same after reading it.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. ( )

'We're not separate from our histories.'

This is a brave and bold debut from Japanese-born Asako Serizawa. In a series of inter-connected stories that follow various generations of the same family, moving back and forwards in time, it's more a novel than stories. Covering a period of something like 150 years, and moving between the US - to where one member of the family emigrated - and Japan, the characters in each generation find themselves addressing the same questions of identity and history: How are we shaped by the past, and who controls the narrative of history?

The book covers many issues that define US, Japanese and Korean relationships, and it isn't afraid to tackle some weighty issues head-on. But it is always in terms of family, as the title refers. One particular section ('Pavilion') involves two brothers discussing Borges' short story 'The Garden of Forking Paths' and this is, I think, vital to understanding the structure and intent of the book. One of them, describing a novel that is part of the short story, comments on the concept of 'diverging, converging, crisscrossing, or simply running parallel across a vast, endless labyrinth of time'. As Serizawa weaves her story in a non-linear fashion the reader has to pay attention to the relationships between characters and this idea of crisscrossing stories. The final couple of sections move us into the future of the mid 2030s, with the next generation of the family coping with a very different world.

Indeed, for me, these last two sections didn't quite sit as well as the rest of the book, ending with a sort of sci-fi feel that slightly jarred against what had been, until then, a wonderfully crafted book. Despite this, however, Serizawa has announced herself as a writer worth watching, and this is a terrific, intelligent kind of book that fully deserves to be read. Can't quite give it 5 stars, but a notable 4.5 stars for sure. Enjoyable and thought-provoking. ( )