Book Review: WHEN I WHISTLE by Shusaku Endo

When I Whistle by Shūsaku Endō
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Some people leave no impression at all upon your heart, no matter how often you encounter them in life. But there are also people who touch your life only once whom you cannot forget for as long as you live."

We have again another Endo novel with a lot of its action taking place in a hospital.

So many of the works of Endo take place in this scenario, and today I finally found out why.

In the Preface, Endo says that altogether he has spent four years of his life as an invalid, one in Paris and three in Japan, with his heart stopping in one of his several operations to take out one lung.

No wonder the man writes of Life, Faith, and Death this way!

The appeal of the hospital, Endo wrote, is because "there people must cast off all the decorations of society." Masks are gone, souls revealed by the manner they face death and tragedy.

In "When I Whistle," two young men grow up before World War II breaks out, falling in love with local girl. The novel shifts timelines to underscore the difference between the generation that didn't know war, and the one where everyone lost someone.

This was simpler and less convoluted than other Endo novels, but still well worth reading (is there any Endo book that isn't?). The familiar ethical quandary rears it head: a medical one. Is it worth risking the life of a patient in order to test a new drug? But somehow, the book feels less religious than Endo's other works. It makes its reader reflect on those who passed through our lives so briefly, perhaps only for a few days, or months. But without our meeting them, we would not be who we are, now.

It shows the breadth and depth of Love, in its purest form. For even without the expected ending in prolonged love affairs or relationships, souls still have power to shape destinies of those we never knew.

At the start of 2023, it made me think back with fondness for those butterflies of fate in my own life, and how wonderful it is that we can impact others so powerfully, even without our knowledge.



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