Since his first novel published in 1999, Aki Shimazaki has been delivering his little fables focused on the human condition at a hyper regular pace – literally once a year for 10 years.

Result: a good twenty novels published in nearly 25 years, divided into several long cycles. Niré is part of the fourth that the Sino-Quebec author began three years ago, entitled A bell without a clapper, but the author always makes sure that it is not necessary to have read a whole cycle to understand each of its parts.

Niré is the other side of Sémi, which appeared two years ago, in which we observed a woman with Alzheimer’s through the eyes of her husband. This time, the couple’s son is the narrator, but you can really take the story as it is. In Niré, Nobuki, who is the father of two children, has difficulty accepting that his mother no longer recognizes him. But when he discovers (a lot) more about her by reading her diary, he will begin a path that will allow him to better understand her, and to communicate better.

Niré is a book about memory and family, that of blood and the one we choose. On heredity and inheritance too, what we transmit and what we receive, what we remember and what we forget. But even if we appreciate, as always, this simple way that the author uses to say things, we have the impression that she has gotten a little lost in her demonstrations which go in several directions and abuse coincidences. Thus, the few moments of intense emotions that she always knows how to create are not enough to make this Niré one of her best vintages. Normal that it happens sometimes, and it will not prevent us from returning to it over the next few years.