Reviews

I'd probably give this 3.5 stars if I could. I really enjoyed Mieko Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs but, despite its many similarities to that novel, I found All the Lovers in the Night to be a bit disappointing and frustrating. Like others, I found the protagonist's passivity to be tiresome. Her infatuation with Mitsutsuka (reminiscent of the relationship at the centre of Hiromi Kawakami's Strange Weather in Tokyo ) seemed oddly schoolgirl-ish. Perhaps because I didn't find much to like in Irie, I found myself somewhat repulsed by her rapid slide into alcoholism and then depression (or perhaps the other way around). The novel has an interesting climax in the last ten pages, which is then rapidly followed by a brief coda that takes place some years after the events of the bulk of the text. This made the end of the novel seem oddly abrupt to me and I would have liked to find out more of what happens to the characters as I found myself on the last page of the book. It felt like the end of Part I rather than the end of a novel.

With all that being said, there is quite a bit that I enjoyed from the book. Mieko Kawakami's trademark descriptions of habitual actions, well-written dialogue and explorations of sensation (as well as the characters' discussions of light) were all enjoyable to read. I just found myself wishing that they were focused around a more interesting protagonist.