The Hunting Gun - Yasushi Inoue,

The first of this Japanese master’s fifty works of fiction ( a debut made when the author was forty-two), this spare novel conveys all the exhilaration, sufferings, and surprises of a long, illicit love affair. Told through three letters written by three different women to a man named Misugi Josuke, the narrative is a refined presentation of raw passions, with fires breaking out, guns being aimed, and characters startled to discover hidden selves--“snakes” of “egotism, jealousy, destiny.” As Misugi’s spurned wife, his lover, and his mistress’s daughter by turns confess, wail, scheme, accuse, and say goodbye, the book becomes a kaleidoscopic meditation on love, with Inoue’s restrained prose the perfect backdrop for images as psychologically telling as they are chilling: a lifeless marriage besieges itself in its “fortress,” a steamy Gauguin is replaced by a wintery Vlaminck, and a passing train gives off three brief but brilliant sparks.