‘The Story of a Single Woman’ by Chiyo Uno (Review)

After starting this year’s Women in Translation Month journey in a near-future Japan, today sees us staying in that country, but taking a leap into the past. We’re heading back a hundred years or so to catch up with a woman leading a life less ordinary, one that will see her moving from place to place, and man to man, on a regular basis. It’s a perfect story for #WITMonth, and luckily enough (contrary to my initial expectations), it’s one that all of you will be able to access, too… ***** Chiyo Uno’s The Story of a Single Woman (translated by Rebecca Copeland) is, as you’d expect, a novel looking back at a woman’s formative years. The narrator, now in her seventies, is reflecting on the first decades in the life of a woman called Kazue, who having been born towards the end of the nineteenth century, passes her early years in the first few decades of the twentieth century, a time of great change in Japan. The first scenes show us Kazue as a dutiful young girl growing up in an…