The Kappa Child

Lynne Perras teaches communication arts at the University of Calgary.

The powerful effect that a damaged childhood can have on one’s adult
life is the central theme of this remarkable novel. At one point, the
Japanese heroine-narrator writes, “I’ve always hoped that childhood
could be a book, a sequence of pages that I could flip through, or
close. ... But, of course not. Childhood isn’t a book and it doesn’t
end.”

The narrator grows up in a family of four sisters, an abusive father,
and a kind but ineffectual mother. The family moves from British
Columbia to Alberta, where—the climate notwithstanding—the father
wants to grow rice. Poverty and their father’s brutality cause the
narrator and her sisters (nicknamed Slither, Mice, and PG) to become
damaged adults estranged from each other, their parents, and even their
own selves. It is through the appearance of the kappa—a mythical
Japanese figure with webbed hands and feet, a beaked mouth, and a
bowl-shaped head containing water—that the narrator ultimately comes
to see the value in the lives of both herself and others.

Inexplicable pregnancy and alien abductions are among the other
imaginative ingredients of a book that features lovely images, humor,
engaging characters, a lively pace, and the inspiring message that there
is hope even in the darkest of situations.