A review by ainedougherty
Scattered All Over the Earth by Yōko Tawada

1.0

I was very excited by the concept of this book (set in the near future, climate change has destroyed many places in the world, and languages have disappeared, leaving people to navigate the world as people without homelands), but I was majorly disappointed. The language of this book was very academic and stiff, and always made me feel like there was something going on above my head, like the story was told in metaphors that I always missed. I think it was a mistake that this story was told from so many perspectives (7, I think?) because I felt a lack of connection to them. It was interesting that the characters’ backgrounds wove together in ways they didn’t know when they met, but other than those discoveries, I found this book very boring and difficult to read.