The Little House

Kyoko Nakajima's The Little House (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) is wonderful. Similar to what she does in many of her short stories, she leaves the really impactful bits right to the end.

Most of the book is set between 1930 and the war and told by Taki, a housemaid in Tokyo, until the very last chapter, which is set in the near present and took my breath away - it somehow amplifies the story, and takes it way beyond everything you've read up to that point.