Hitomi

"Maybe I could be the world's foremost expert on the smallest things." So begins Nick Jaina's whirlwind first novel Hitomi, about a piano player who just wants to find some quiet time to write about the grandeur in a single speck of dust, but gets pulled on an adventure across the country. Ian moved to New York to write a novel. But a series of unfortunate losses—his car, his housemate, possibly his best friend Robert—have led him to join a band of musicians and tour across the country. As he charts the states of ambiguous grief for his friend, he is falling in equally ambiguous love with Hitomi, who may or may not still be dating the guitarist. Oregon Book Award finalist Nick Jaina writes about doubt and misery in the most rollicking, page-turning way. Can you grieve someone without confirmation of loss? Can you love someone without possessing them? The answer is found in every corner of America. The answer is in the smallest things. “Every page of Hitomi swells with Nick Jaina's warmth, perspicacity and subtle humor. Here is a writer keenly in touch with the human condition, whose characters come to feel, very quickly, like old friends.” –Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy