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sherbertwells's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
A collection of tender short stories that peer into the half-recalled lives of ordinary people in 20th-century Japan. Inoue’s narrators manage to twist their hazy, pathetic memories into stirring narratives by sheer force of imagination, a feat which both charms and unsettles the reader.
“As I strung these pieces together, I had come to hold in my mind an image of this counterfeiter’s sixty-seven-year-life as a sort of flow—a dark and frigid stream. There was no rhyme or rhythm to that painful surging, the dark and turbid motion of some essence the man know as Hara Hōsen carried within him from the moment of his birth that rendered it impossible for him to live otherwise than he did” (79)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Infidelity
Minor: Death, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
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