Summary

The short story “A Family Supper” by Kazuo Ishiguro begins with an unnamed young man exposing the strange circumstances in which his mother died of eating Fugu, a type of poisonous fish. If the fish is not carefully cleaned and the bags of poison not removed, then the entire fish will be deadly and will provoke a person’s death in a matter of hours. The narrator only finds out about his mother’s death two years after the event, as he was living in California when she died.

The narrator’s father takes him home from the airport and presents to him the circumstances in which his mother has died, as well as the fact that one of his business partners, Watanabe, killed himself when the business failed. Soon, the narrator’s sister, Kikuko, arrives. She is a student in Osaka and she feels rather awkward when she formally discusses with her father ...