THE NINTH PLATE

Ren repairs broken things for a living. When he inherits his grandmother's house, he inherits something harder to mend: a covered well, a set of nine plates depicting the stages of a human life, and the persistent sense that something beneath the water is keeping count. As he traces the plates back through two centuries of Harima Province, Ren meets the voices that have gathered around them. Aoi, who counts to nine in the dark. Haru, a porcelain master who could never set down his guilt. Sachiko, who knows what the family agreed to and will not say. Hannah, marked by a crane-shaped scar, carrying names no one else remembers. And Mio, a child who should not be possible. Told as a mosaic of chapters, poems, and exercises that can be entered from any direction, this is a mystical novel about the memory held inside objects, the power of a name to make a person real, and a love that refuses to observe the boundaries of death or time. Nine plates hold what the living will forget. The tenth holds what must never be forgotten, and someone has to give it something to hold.