MĀNOA

Review by Gabriella Contratto

One of the first lessons a creative writer learns is the shape of a good plot, the flat line of exposition, the rising action that culminates in the pointy climax where the plot turns, and the downhill line of the falling action ending in a neat resolution. In Fiction Writing 101, this shape is explained as the most basic and satisfying arc of a story. Kelly Murashige’s sophomore novel, The Yomigaeri Tunnel, crumples up that lesson and throws it in the trash. And thank god for that.

The Yomigaeri Tunnel wastes little time on exposition and quickly launches into the action—action being an emotional healing journey through a haunted (maybe sentient?) tunnel. When Monika hears an urban legend at the Japan Club’s end of year meeting about a tunnel that can bring back the dead, she has someone in mind. Monika and her classmates are about to go to college, except for one—Shun—who died. How he died isn’t told at first—Monika doesn’t start off as the most forthcoming of narrators—and she quickly finds the tunnel, only to realize that she isn’t the only one who has someone they want to bring back. Another student, Shiori, overheard the legend as well, and she wants to bring her mom back to life. They don’t trust each other, and they don’t know how the tunnel works, but the only thing worse than a scary, dark, haunted tunnel is entering said tunnel alone, so they decide to go together.

Most of the story unfolds in the form of tunnel-induced flashbacks, where Monika and Shiori are reminded of something either related to who they want to save or someone else important to them. The further they go into the tunnel, the more varied and further back in time the flashbacks go. Interspersed with each episode, the girls meet up in the tunnel, butting heads or quietly trying to support each other as they share this journey. Instead of climbing a mountain of plot, the girls are trudging forward into the dark, while looking back on their lives. The process of moving through grief and loss is one that is nonlinear, and the plot structure of The Yomigaeri Tunnel reflects that. Emotions run high, and while Monika and Shiori lighten the journey for each other occasionally, most of the memories have to do with loss and regrets. While they are reliving those moments, they also can’t do anything to change them. Most of the forward momentum in the novel then comes from the internal journey they go on as they either process or push aside the memories, always trudging forward to the next one in hopes of that resurrection at the end of the tunnel. At its heart, The Yomigaeri Tunnel is a novel about grief.

One of the beautiful things about fiction is that it allows readers and writers to understand and process things in the real world by transposing those emotions or concerns into alternative situations. YA audiences desperately need a novel like Murashige’s. The story is a heavy one, and at times I found myself having to take breaks—even as a twenty-something year old. In the author’s note at the beginning, Murashige talks about a real loss she suffered with a high school classmate who inspired Shun. She writes, “So though I took some creative liberties, I hope he understands. This book may be fiction, but the emotion is real. The grief is real. The heart is real.”

Young adults are just as likely to suffer loss as adults, but rarely do YA books tackle the emotional burden of losing a friend at a young age. Murashige respects the strength of those emotions, and cares for her readers, knowing that while the story is fiction the emotions are real and ones that her readers could be tackling in their lives. If she had written The Yomigaeri Tunnel with a more traditional plot structure—continuously rising action, triumphant climax, resolving ending—she would have done a disservice to the characters and to her readers. Grief doesn’t work that way. While stories shouldn’t be soapboxes from which the author preaches to the reader about how to live their lives, if Shiori and Monika had been given the linear journey with a neat ending it would have been so far from the real process of grief that it would have been lying to the readers. Instead, she broke with those craft conventions, and Monika’s journey is all the richer for it. By the time they finally exit the tunnel, the resolution feels both earned and unfinished. Readers understand that this is the end of the book but the start of their journey, and that is more satisfying than any cookie-cutter plot ending could be.

YA needs stories that touch on the whole range of experiences and emotions of its readers, not just the fun action-packed ones—although I love those adventures too. Murashige throws in all the fun bits expected of YA speculative fiction: “that’s what she said” jokes, teens over- and under-preparing for tunnel spelunking, and more. While it may not be as traditionally “fun” as her first—and also excellent—book, The Lost Souls of Benzaiten, The Yomigaeri Tunnel is necessary for a reader of any age who needs a reminder that there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Gabriella Contratto just received her MA in English (Creative Writing) from UH Mānoa. She favors prose writing, and is particularly fond of speculative fiction, but her interests include Filipino culture/diasporic writing, LGBT+ communities, sports, and Angeleno communities. Her short story “Wait” was published in The Under Review and she has work forthcoming in The Tiger Moth Review. She is currently working on a YA urban-fantasy novel set in Los Angeles featuring a kidnapping, a vegan aswang, and a french fry obsessed anito.