Reviews

W pogoni za dalekim głosem by Taichi Yamada, Anna Horikoshi

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faroclau's review against another edition

2.0

i enjoy Yamada's writing style, enjoyed strangers however this book was disappointing. I guess the ending left too much for the reader to guess... I felt it ended too abrupt. I must day that even though I'm criticizing it, I did find it easy and entertaining to read.

laurenzokro's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

This book had so much to say and also a whole lot of nothing to say. Was very hard to keep going after that first chapter tbh but it did pick up a bit after that. I do think it was stylistically well written and a potentially interesting concept, but as a whole feels very unresolved and lacks a real theme/central message. I guess I get the whole idea of it trying to show that there are some things you won’t be able to ever fully understand/comprehend, and the difficulty of accepting that, but I just don’t feel like it was executed super well. I feel like it’s hard to make that the central theme when everything about the book feels so scant and unexplored.

Also the ending was basically repeated twice, once when Tsuneo met the girl at the tennis courts and once when he met the girl at the picture gallery. Both times, the woman’s voice was trying to help him move on with someone else and do so in a way so he wouldn’t ever realize it. But then it also didn’t work either time? And why would the voice reach out on the first place? Why talk about the strength of the connection they had and the emotion behind it and then put it to an end for no clear/apparent reason (other than apparently being ugly + lonely to an unfathomable degree)? I really just can’t get a grasp on what I was supposed to take away from this.

Overall it was a fine read with an interesting concept and good writing style, but just fell flat in a lot of ways.

Content Warnings

nairijan's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A really interesting concept and I honestly I wish it had been longer than a novella. I did appreciate how surreal the story was with the distant voice but other than that there was little else the book had going for it.

scarletohhara's review against another edition

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3.0

Picked it off a friend’s bookshelf, finished reading on a 4 he flight to Dubai.

I didn’t see the allure of this book, the narration or the plot itself. It deals with mental health and a magic realism element but felt confused.

jacqui_des's review against another edition

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2.0

After reading wonderful reviews for some of [a:Taichi Yamada|261393|Taichi Yamada|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg]’s others works such as [b:Strangers|1347446|Strangers|Taichi Yamada|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182900796s/1347446.jpg|1337097] and [Book: I Haven't Dreamed of Flying for a While], I had high hopes for this book and really wanted to like it; but i didn't. At first i thought it was merely the translation that was letting it down, as the book explored some inetersting themes - loneliness and a sense of longing, the quest for truth and understanding, the search for something greater, ideas of sexuality, guilt and identity. However, by the end of the book, depsite Yamada's ability to capture and evoke in the reader a sense of haunting melancholy, i didn't feel that there was enough substance or depth to the characters he was portraying and the ambiguous ending left me feeling like i'd come full circle - i was just as unclear in the end as i was in the beginning.

Memorable Quotes

"People who have nothing but work are weak. If they fail at their job, they have a hard time picking themselves up again."

"...try to work at taking it easy."

"The sadness enters me. I feel incredibly sad. I don't have any idea where the sadness comes from. Because I'm not the one who's sad. I just feel an unbelievably deep sadness. And then, after a while, the sadness goes away. It slips away from me and it's gone. And I'm left there with nothing but my own feelings. They're so weak and pathetic I hardly feel justified in calling them feelings at all, and I start to wonder if maybe the truth is that I've never really been sad, not once, in my whole life."

"A thick, deep feeling passes through me. It goes right through me. And all I'm left with afterwards is my own worthless, flimsy emotions."

lecas's review against another edition

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It was boring and misogynistic. I couldn't relate to the main character and it all just felt like I was reading in circles, if that makes sense? I felt like no matter how much I read and "progressed" in the story, I always ended up in the same place and without any development on what this book is truly about.