From a distance even dust motes twinkle deluding the human eye - Review of Twinkle Twinkle by Kaori Ekuni

“I try to be careful, but sometimes I fall in love.” Kaori Ekuni in her afterword of the novel.

Mutuski, a gay doctor bordering on OCD is married to Shoko a highly strung, slightly alcoholic woman. Shoko is aware that Mutsuki is gay when their marriage is arranged but she gives her consent readily. She strongly agrees that Mutsuki continues his relationship with his lover Kon, always coaxing him to tell her stories about Kon and their time together. When Mutsuki insists that Shoko should have a boyfriend, she vehemently denies. She doesn't warm up to the idea about having a boyfriend outside her marriage, but she is alright with her husband having a lover outside the marriage.
Sounds bizarre right? Well I thought so too in the beginning, and it took me a while to get into the story. However, it was much later I realised that I had actually fallen in love with this story and its eccentric female character. Shoko is unstable, fiery and drinks more than one should. She feels she’s culpable in fooling Mutsuki into the marriage and cannot stand his kindness. But the truth  is, she is deeply in love with her husband and with the way he is with Kon, knowing that their relationship goes way back to high school days. She desperately wants to have a part of what Mutsuki and Kon have. She wants to be accepted by the two of them and when she cannot get that through to Mutsuki, she retaliates through volatile outbursts and depressive behaviour.
Twinkle Twinkle is not your ordinary story and the simplistic writing does delude you to the point that it may sometimes even bore you in the beginning but if you have the patience, this gem of a story gets to you even before you realise it. It’s a late bloomer appearing cold and stiff in the beginning to the point of frustrating the reader, but slowly unfolds into this heart-warming story of love and a complete understanding of the other half. It also made me rethink about romantic love and its inevitable tie with physical consummation.
“The feeling I had that I was embracing water came not from the loneliness of a sexless marriage, but from the complex we both had about it – the suffocating need to be sensitive to the other’s feelings the whole time.”
Twinkle Twinkle does address the frustrations of societal pressures of how men and women are supposed to conform to their stereotypical roles of man and wife, but the author’s main intent is to tell a love story between unlikely people, and that, love is not something restricted to sexual preferences or the number of people. Love can bloom between any two or even three very different people.
The author mentions in her afterword that one of the chapters “Sleepers and the One that Watcheth” is based on a painting by Simeon Solomon. I looked it up and the author’s intention suddenly became clear to me.
I must add here that only Japanese writers can write about a topic so sensitive and so fragile with such serenity.  I also must give credit to Emi Shimikawa for her brilliant translation. 5 out of 5 stars from me.