'Catherine Meurisse once again draws upon her memories. Her stay in a far-off, strange-yet-familiar land, at the Japanese villa Kujoyama in 2018, provides the artist another opportunity to pursue her creative quest, this time where the West and Far East meet. In the manner of Lewis Carroll, the young artist lets characters out of legend lead her through pictorial landscapes. Imagination and dialogue are key to penetrating the secrets of this strange territory and discovering why the young explorer finds it so fascinating. This Alice daydreams and wonders, returning every now and then to reality and nature, that dynamic dictator of events and situations. After The Great Outdoors, Catherine Meurisse continues her pursuit of beauty in an unknown land, between mountain and sea, illustrating landscapes that reflect the seasons and the artist's progress. Truly splendid!'
The Young Woman and the Sea tells the story of artist Catherine Meurisse as she journeys to an artists retreat in Japan, and the extraordinary things she saw whilst exploring the Japanese countryside.
The book begins with Catherine arriving at the remote coastal retreat, a beautiful building that sits surrounded by woodland, nestled between the sea and a mountain. There to try and capture the beauty of the land around her, Catherine is unsure where to begin; and being jet-lagged she decides to take take a nap. Upon awaking she sees a tanuki outside her window and decides to follow it.
Climbing up the hill behind the retreat Catherine comes face to face with the animal, who immediately starts talking to her. Listening to her talk about her desire to recapture the beauty of Japan's nature, the tanuki gives her a paintbrush made from its own fur, and teaches her to write something on a piece of paper in Japanese. When she looks away from the creature for but a moment, however, it vanishes. Left alone and unsure where to go to Catherine starts to try to find her way back to the retreat, getting lost in the process.
From here the artist begins to explore the world around her, wandering the countryside, and befriending a local artist who is searching for the perfect woman to paint. Together, the two of them make their way to a bathhouse, where they are able to stay the night and meet the owner, a beautiful woman who the artist wishes to paint as a drowned lady. The next day Catherine is able to explore more of the surrounding land, discovering the beauty in the everyday, as well as small special places tucked out of sight. Throughout it all, she keeps meeting up with the Tanuki, who keeps challenging her as to why she has yet to find her inspiration.
The story of The Young Woman and the Sea is a little odd, and you can very much tell that its semi-autobiographical, as not a huge amount really happens here. For much of the book we follow Charlotte as she walks from place to place, discovering more of the beauty of Japan, and learning about various people's connection to it. She's looking to be inspired by what she finds, yet isn't sure how that will work for her yet. This is where the tanuki seems to come in.
Now, I would be extremely surprised if the real Catherine met a magical talking tanuki, and this is either creative license or a surprise revelation that magic animals are real. However, the creature seems to be trying to coax Charlotte into coming to the realisations she needs in order to make the most of her time in Japan, and begin to create the art she really wants to. But when the book comes to a close there is a question left hanging over whether any of it was even real. The final pages seem to imply that much of what we've just read, and perhaps everything from the moment Charlotte fell asleep, could in fact be a dream; her mind coming up with a scenario by which she's exploring the world.
Alongside the somewhat vague story, the characters feel a little strange too, and I failed to really get a sense of who anyone was really supposed to be. Charlotte spends the entire book lost, unable to find the thing that will kick-start her art, the old artist she meets is strangely obsessed with drowned women and poetry, the hostess they talk to seems to be implied to be ghostly and ancient, though perhaps not; and then there's the magical talking animal who's doing all this for its own amusement I guess. The characters seem to only be there to move events from one location to another, not really having much to do, but simply there to get the reader to new places.
These places are, in fact, the highlight of the book, as Meurisse has done some wonderful landscape art for the book, managing to craft some truly beautiful moments as the characters journey around the Japanese countryside. It really does feel like the artist went and spent some time in the place, and that it became a sauce of inspiration for her. The only thing that lets the art down is that the characters are very simple and cartoonish in comparison. The landscapes are stunning, but the people look like they come out of a newspaper strip comic and the two don't mesh at all. I often found myself being drawn out of things by these two conflicting styles; and that definitely hurt my enjoyment of the book.
Overall, The Young Woman and the Sea was a fairly enjoyable book, though one where I was enjoying looking at the art more than I was reading the story or getting to know any of the characters. It's a shame that I was unable to connect with any of the characters in any real way, but hopefully others will be able to do so. The book is a beautiful examination of the wonder of Japanese landscapes and countryside, yet contains little else to go with it.
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