A Distant Neighborhood

By Jiro Taniguchi. Published by Fanfare Ponent Mon

Hardcover, 404 pages, B&W, 2016 (Originally published in Japanese in 1998)

Who hasn't thought about reliving their past, correcting perceived mistakes or changing crucial decisions? Would this better your life or the lives of those closest to you? Or would your altered actions prove even more harmful? One man gets the chance to find out...

Middle-aged Hiroshi Nakahara is on his way home from a business trip when he finds himself on the wrong train heading for his childhood hometown. His footsteps take him to his mother's grave and it's there that he is catapulted back into his life as an 8th grader - but with all his adult memories and knowledge intact. As he struggles to make sense of his predicament his adult memories of his childhood return but are somehow subtly changed. The questions start to form ... would his father still disappear without explanation? would he still marry his wife?