asharamakumar's review against another edition
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I think this book had a lot of potential, but unfortunately by the time I reached the end, I found myself asking "huh?"
I found the first book interesting, albeit a bit heavy-handed when it came to the discussion of women's bodies. I don't want to be too harsh on it because I read the translated version, and it is entirely possible that the Japanese version is much more poetic. I thought the relationship between
I agree with other reviews that say it's too long. It did drag a lot, and I think we could have done without
Overall, I feel like there were a lot of interesting threads that just never get picked up, and by the end it all just falls kind of flat. That being said, it's an interesting read!
I found the first book interesting, albeit a bit heavy-handed when it came to the discussion of women's bodies. I don't want to be too harsh on it because I read the translated version, and it is entirely possible that the Japanese version is much more poetic. I thought the relationship between
Spoiler
Makiko and Midoriko was extremely interesting and I would have loved to see more about how Midoriko's silence and Makiko's breast augmentation surgery manifested in Book Two. But it never came back! I was at page 420 hoping that this would be addressed but it never was. I'm not even sure we ever find out if Makiko had her surgery (which is fine, a little mystery is good).Spoiler
I agree with other reviews that say it's too long. It did drag a lot, and I think we could have done without
Spoiler
numerous scenes of Natsu collapsing on her futon in the summer heat.Spoiler
Overall, I feel like there were a lot of interesting threads that just never get picked up, and by the end it all just falls kind of flat. That being said, it's an interesting read!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual violence
Minor: Xenophobia
Definitely some transphobia, don't think this is the most enlightened way to talk about women's bodies...saskiahill's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.75
Richly written, the author's writing style really brings the scenes to life. There's lots of interesting themes explored including parenthood, womanhood, being single, birth, growing up and more, which are tackled well. The book doesn't follow a really clear plot with obvious start, middle and end, but it is told in a linear way and feels satisfying nonetheless. The characters are neither lovable or bad, they are very real and relatable. At times the pace dipped, or I didn't particularly relate to a section - but I think that's more to do with me being a 'mood reader' than about the book itself.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Cancer, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Infertility
Moderate: Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Sexual assault, Transphobia, Rape, Incest, Alcohol, Body shaming, and Terminal illness
pandorasirens's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pregnancy, Mental illness, Grief, and Misogyny
Moderate: Terminal illness, Sexual assault, Death of parent, Rape, Death, Infertility, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Alcohol, and Cancer
Minor: Body shaming, Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Classism, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Bullying, and Pedophilia
nozycozy's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
So human. So Beautiful. Kawakami’s riveting prose makes you feel like you’re a part of Natsumes life. Her thoughts and interactions with others were at times sad but these are the realities many women face. I learned so much and connected with many of the women in her life. This was a gorgeously written emotional reflection of the woman’s experience.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny, Child abuse, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Chronic illness, Infertility, Cancer, Emotional abuse, Rape, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Trafficking, and Alcoholism
vellumveela's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
The characters fell a bit flat for me, despite the narrative being entirely driven by dialogue, relationship dynamics, and contemplation. In more than a few occasions, characters felt very trope-y. That said, Kawakami captured and maintains a keen sense of bittersweet melancholy all throughout the novel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Body shaming, and Sexism
Moderate: Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Death, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence
Minor: Transphobia
asainspace's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Misogyny, and Sexism
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Sexual violence and Cancer
hareii's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity
Moderate: Child abuse, Death of parent, and Sexual violence
Minor: Cancer
liv_txt's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault, Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship, Suicide, Mental illness, Death, Terminal illness, Death of parent, Suicide attempt, Sexual violence, Rape, Car accident, Cancer, Alcohol, and Abandonment
stanro's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
5.0
As I am booked to travel to Japan soon, I am audioreading this in preparation, excitedly hearing unfamiliar places and foods and personal names and the way the words are said.
It is a challenging book for a cis western male to read, as it deals so intimately with the female body and women’s attitudes to it.
The principal character is Natsu, a struggling author, unpartnered and childless, who we meet when she is thirty and living in Tokyo. Her older sister Makiko and her daughter Midoriko are visiting for a few days so Makiko can consult clinics about having breast augmentation surgery. At this stage, Midoriko has been not speaking to her mother for about 6 months and this extends to her aunt Natsu. When she needs to, she writes in a notebook to communicate. She also keeps a diary and from its excerpts we learn about a young girl approaching pubescencce and about her concerns about her mother and her breasts obsession.
Skip forward some eight years (to 2016) and Natsu is still unpartnered and childless and conscious of the pages of her biological calendar turning. She is now a published author of one book (there is a great sequence of a literary ‘meet the author’s night’ that leads her to a friendship with another female author) and this success is sufficient for her to live in a better district and to send her sister some money each month. Midoriko is in her latish teens and seems to have resumed normal communication.
At 38, Natsu is exploring artificial insemination and considering single parenthood. She attends a seminar where a participant says: “Having a child has always been determined by forces beyond our control, by nature. But with donor conception, it’s all about ego. Foremost, the egos of the parents, but also the egos of the doctors, who view the life they bring into the world as an end that glorifies the means.”
I’m enjoying this book as it swallows me up into its Japanese milieu, with exotic names and foods and bath house customs and other fleeting cultural references.
And at this stage of the book, Natsu’s life is more interactive. She meets Sengawa, her editor, often. There’s an encounter with a former bookstore colleague whose story about her life is quite heart-rending in its way. And there’s a fellow author with whom a friendship is growing and a male doctor, progeny of sperm donation, with whom she is developing a friendship. Will it lead to something deeper? And there is her meeting with the narcissistic self-obsessed potential direct sperm donor!
Compared with the relative emotional and expressive restraint of the first part of the book, this part, set eight years later, is more emotionally rollicking.
Not long ago I read Lionel Shriver’s Should We Stay Or Should We Go, in which she covered her subject matter of planned dying, and it’s alternatives, very thoroughly.
This covers it’s subject matter very thoroughly and, I’d say, more conversationally.
I’ve always been puzzled by the strength of certainty that would-be parents have about having a child as their right and natural thing to do that must be achieved. And as for the fierce determination of some who are childless, to overcome that, this has left me more than just puzzled. In this book there is a timely conversation between Natsu, who seems close to attempting artificial insemination, and another woman, Yuriko, who argues that regardless of the means of insemination, the real question is why have a child at all. She formulates having a child as a violence against the child. And again asks, “why?”
Eventually, the book reaches its not-too-hard-to-anticipate conclusion. The last third of the book gallops along compared with the preceding part. Still very well written.
“His hair was neat as ever, swept back like reeds in water,” Natsuko says of Izawa.
Meanwhile, in another meeting, Yuriko says “But I can never accept life. Not if I want to go on living.”
This is fine writing. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A postscript about the audio version. Later in the book, the silence between chapters, typically about 5 seconds in most audiobooks, stretches to about a minute. You are left for a long time to let what you’ve just heard reverberate. And to check that your device is functioning properly 😀.
It is a challenging book for a cis western male to read, as it deals so intimately with the female body and women’s attitudes to it.
The principal character is Natsu, a struggling author, unpartnered and childless, who we meet when she is thirty and living in Tokyo. Her older sister Makiko and her daughter Midoriko are visiting for a few days so Makiko can consult clinics about having breast augmentation surgery. At this stage, Midoriko has been not speaking to her mother for about 6 months and this extends to her aunt Natsu. When she needs to, she writes in a notebook to communicate. She also keeps a diary and from its excerpts we learn about a young girl approaching pubescencce and about her concerns about her mother and her breasts obsession.
Skip forward some eight years (to 2016) and Natsu is still unpartnered and childless and conscious of the pages of her biological calendar turning. She is now a published author of one book (there is a great sequence of a literary ‘meet the author’s night’ that leads her to a friendship with another female author) and this success is sufficient for her to live in a better district and to send her sister some money each month. Midoriko is in her latish teens and seems to have resumed normal communication.
At 38, Natsu is exploring artificial insemination and considering single parenthood. She attends a seminar where a participant says: “Having a child has always been determined by forces beyond our control, by nature. But with donor conception, it’s all about ego. Foremost, the egos of the parents, but also the egos of the doctors, who view the life they bring into the world as an end that glorifies the means.”
I’m enjoying this book as it swallows me up into its Japanese milieu, with exotic names and foods and bath house customs and other fleeting cultural references.
And at this stage of the book, Natsu’s life is more interactive. She meets Sengawa, her editor, often. There’s an encounter with a former bookstore colleague whose story about her life is quite heart-rending in its way. And there’s a fellow author with whom a friendship is growing and a male doctor, progeny of sperm donation, with whom she is developing a friendship. Will it lead to something deeper? And there is her meeting with the narcissistic self-obsessed potential direct sperm donor!
Compared with the relative emotional and expressive restraint of the first part of the book, this part, set eight years later, is more emotionally rollicking.
Not long ago I read Lionel Shriver’s Should We Stay Or Should We Go, in which she covered her subject matter of planned dying, and it’s alternatives, very thoroughly.
This covers it’s subject matter very thoroughly and, I’d say, more conversationally.
I’ve always been puzzled by the strength of certainty that would-be parents have about having a child as their right and natural thing to do that must be achieved. And as for the fierce determination of some who are childless, to overcome that, this has left me more than just puzzled. In this book there is a timely conversation between Natsu, who seems close to attempting artificial insemination, and another woman, Yuriko, who argues that regardless of the means of insemination, the real question is why have a child at all. She formulates having a child as a violence against the child. And again asks, “why?”
Eventually, the book reaches its not-too-hard-to-anticipate conclusion. The last third of the book gallops along compared with the preceding part. Still very well written.
“His hair was neat as ever, swept back like reeds in water,” Natsuko says of Izawa.
Meanwhile, in another meeting, Yuriko says “But I can never accept life. Not if I want to go on living.”
This is fine writing. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A postscript about the audio version. Later in the book, the silence between chapters, typically about 5 seconds in most audiobooks, stretches to about a minute. You are left for a long time to let what you’ve just heard reverberate. And to check that your device is functioning properly 😀.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Pedophilia and Sexual violence
kbrsuperstar's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
I think this might be one of the greatest novels I've ever read. The only extremely minor flaw was that it felt a little too neatly wrapped up at the end BUT OTHERWISE my god, I did not want this to end. I just finished it barely 30 minutes ago and maybe after I sleep on it I can be more insightful than just saying wow but also really WOW
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, Child abuse, Incest, and Sexual violence
Minor: Transphobia, Pregnancy, and Lesbophobia