A tender, quietly luminous story about friendship, illness and the intimacy of growing up alongside someone you may soon lose.

Narrated by Maria, who returns to the seaside town of her childhood, the novel centres on her cousin Tsugumi — fragile in body, impossible in temperament, cruel one moment and fiercely loving the next.

Yoshimoto has an extraordinary ability to make the ordinary shimmer. Summer afternoons, family meals, bicycles, old inns and conversations by the sea accumulate into something gently profound, exploring memory not as nostalgia but as a way of understanding how people continue to inhabit us long after places and seasons disappear. Michael Emmerich's translation preserves Yoshimoto's characteristic clarity and emotional precision, making this one of the essential works of contemporary Japanese fiction.

For readers drawn to Yōko Ogawa, Hiromi Kawakami or Mieko Kawakami, Goodbye Tsugumi offers a quieter but equally affecting meditation on family, impermanence and the emotional landscapes of youth.

Early Faber & Faber paperback edition, 2003. Translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich. Near fine condition. Clean throughout with light shelf wear to the wraps and a tight, square binding.