Emily Grandy - Böcker

When sixteen-year-old Ignatius “Egg” Girard is told he’ll be spending the next three months on his estranged grandfather’s failing farm in Hale Creek, Kentucky, getting the place ready to sell, he foresees chores, isolation, and the erosion of everything he’d planned for his summer vacation.At first, Egg is resolved simply to endure: the scorching, tedious days; his grandfather’s silences punctuated by harsh outbursts. But then Egg makes two bewildering discoveries. Hidden away in his mother’s childhood bedroom, he unearths a bundle of decades-old letters written in a language he cannot decipher. When he shows them to his grandfather, the reaction is immediate and unsettling: the letters are thrown away without explanation. Then there’s the startling encounter with a secretive ground-dwelling bird thought to have gone extinct in the 1930s, drawing a biologist and her team to the property just as it’s about to be put up for sale.Blending dry humor with emotional depth, Cupido Cupido navigates family estrangement, cultural inheritance, and the complex act of growing up. As Egg wrestles with questions of identity and legacy, the farm becomes a place of unlikely discoveries—about the people who raised him, the profound weight of their shared histories, and the unspoken ways love persists through distance and time.Likely to appeal to readers of Ann Patchett, Celeste Ng, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Emily Grandy’s Cupido Cupido is a quietly powerful exploration of memory, belonging, and the fine line between what is lost and what might yet be found.

After enduring a complicated recovery from eating disorders, Winona Heeley is struggling to return to normal life. Her mother recommends a change in scenery and arranges for Winona to stay with friends in rural Japan, at Michikusa House. The centuries’ old farmhouse hosts residents who want to learn about growing their own food and cooking with the seasons. Jun Nakashima, an aspiring kaiseki chef, is one such resident. Like Winona, Jun is a recovering addict and college dropout. While the two bond over culinary rituals, they change each other’s lives by reconstructing long-held beliefs about shame, identity, and renewal. But after Winona returns to her Midwest hometown, and despite her best efforts to keep in touch, Jun vanishes. Two years pass, and Win is about to drop out of university for a second time, a decision that irreparably fractures her relationship with her partner of nearly a decade. Refusing to accept permanent failure and disappointment, Winona once again seeks revival through gardening. Much to the chagrin of her parents, she accepts a job as a groundskeeper at a local cemetery and begins searching for Jun Nakashima once more.