Letný príbeh (slovensky) – Kawakami Mieko (2021)

On a hot summer day, we meet three women in the suburbs of Tokyo – thirty-year-old Natsuko and her older sister Makiko, who has come to the city with her teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko struggles with aging and the changes in her body and is determined to undergo breast surgery. She believes that only then will she regain her happiness and the missing sense of attractiveness. Midoriko suffers from her mother's obsession and, at a vulnerable time in her adolescence, accepts every change in her body with growing resistance, which leads her to decide to stop speaking and write all her feelings in a diary. Her silence completely dominates Natsuko's apartment, where all three women grapple with insecurities, anxiety, and their relationships with one another. We meet Natsuko again eight years later. She has become a writer and is embarking on a journey back to her hometown. She reminisces about that long-ago hot summer and reflects on her family's past in light of her own desires and an uncertain future. The novel Summer Story, published in English under the title Breasts and Eggs, offers a radical intimate portrait of a woman in contemporary Japanese society. It presents an unforgettable emotional testimony about the search for inner strength and balance.