Set in an unmarked pawnshop tucked behind a ramen restaurant, Filipino author Samantha Sotto Yambao’s Water Moon revolves around clients who pawn their choices—sometimes ones they don’t even remember making. What is life, after all, if not a series of choices? The very act of pawning a choice leaves a void; choices—it turns out—are fragments of the clients’ souls, used to fuel the lives of those on the other side of the pawnshop.
The pawnshop is run by Toshio Ishikawa and is to be inherited by his only daughter, Hana who observes her father, a stoic and enigmatic figure, as he runs the shop with quiet wisdom and a mysterious air. Toshio’s rare moments of anger, his half-smiles, and his devotion to both his daughter and the shop—and Hana’s mother, the love of his life— make him both relatable and inscrutable. His habit of gifting gyokuro, the highest grade of green tea, to clients, speaks to his quiet kindness and adherence to tradition.
Yet Hana and her father have a rather peculiar relationship; the family dynamics are nothing short of dysfunctional, with a seemingly aloof father, a child with a rebellious heart, and a mother who disappeared from their lives when Hana was a toddler due to her coveting a client’s choice; the highest crime in their world.
Hana, brought up to follow every rule so as not to end up like her mother, wakes up one day to find the pawnshop ransacked, her father missing and “the brightest choice” at her doorstep: also the first client to offer help instead of seeking it; Keishin. The two then embark on a journey of highs and lows through a whimsical land, facing death at every turn and breaking every scientific fact the neutrino-specialist scientist Keishin had ever learned—a perfect setting for a most unusual romance.
The author has planted seedlings from Japanese culture—such as the concept of ikigai (a reason for being)—throughout the book, giving the story depth. The language of the text feels poetic yet familiar yet creates a unique blend of the magical and the quotidian. A passage about tea, for example, perfectly captures this balance:
Tea—It was a simple thought, small and as light as air, without any sharp edges they could cut themselves on. They had all drunk tea before and remembered how it washed over their tongues, slipped down their throats, and warmed their souls. No harm had ever come from a cup of tea.
Such immersive lyricism, places readers directly within the pawnshop, as though they are standing behind the counter with Hana’s father, overhearing the hushed confessions of its clients, even wanting, perhaps, to want to hold their hands and share in their burdens while seeking closure for their own past choices.A recurring theme in the book is freedom—to make choices and bear the consequent weight of regret; for some, as a limitless possibility; for others, like those in the protagonist’s world, freedom as a foreign concept, shaped by fate rather than will. While the clients of the pawnshop are given the freedom to trade their choices, Hana and her father are bound by fate. For them, freedom isn’t in choosing, but in making peace with choices made for them:
No two people unshackle themselves from the same choice. Each person has their own idea of what freedom tastes like.
This stark contrast between the freedom of the clients from the ordinary world and the rigidity of Hana’s world is where the novel’s magic truly lies. The mother’s backstory, having chosen “death” by stealing a choice, adds a layer of tragedy and intrigue to the family dynamic. Water Moon is best described as “comfort fiction”, and since it lacks neither thrill nor excitement, it.is a perfect introduction for readers new to the genre. Blending magic with emotional depth, all while weaving in hints of survival and resilience, Water Moon is a modern fusion of Studio Ghibli and Harry Potter, while aphorisms like:
In reality, it was the choices that people didn’t even realize they were making that set the course of their lives …
linger long after the last page.
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