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This book by Kenzaburo Oe's is almost opposite to his A personal matter.A personal matter is written with a darkness and anger that will shock the readers.The protoganist in that book was a creation of the authors very own experiences of fathering a brain damaged child.He vents out his anger in that book on anything and everything and even goes as far as to kill the child.But Healing family is quiet opposite to it.

Healing family is not a story, it is just kenzaburo's personal experiences with his son.This book kind of completes his earlier book 'A personal matter'.His son struggles with his brain malfunction and has problems communicating.He has to be taken care by someone and all his family members including his wife, son and daughter help him a lot.Even though he has problems cimmunication, music comes to his son naturally and he had grown up into a music composer.His son hikari(light) has composed and released two Classical music cd's.



For kenzaburo his son becomes the focus of everything that he writes.He says how he transformed that personal tragedy into something bigger by relating it to the pain that there nation suffered, he is talking about Hiroshima.And how his visit to hiroshima, hiroshima hospitals and the pain endured by others made him look at his pain as a trifle one.

There are only 2 factors I recall clearly that might have answered that question:one was the intense feeling that the problem of my child would end up suffocating me if I couldn't get out into a larger arena, see things from a broader perspective..

Kenzaburo went on to write many books about hiroshima.(Call it conincidence i just watched Alain Resnais's classic "Hiroshima mon amour" before reading the book).

The book is very simple and loosesly knitted around various incidents.The book will make lot of sense and show the change that has come into the author, if someone has already read his 'A personal matter'.But on it's own the book is hardly intresting, as it is not a story, or does not have any emotional writings, it is just a collection of some simple moments, which are very close to oe.