Beneath the murder mystery and social media commentary is a novel deeply interested in visibility and desirability.
Whether you admire it may depend on your tolerance for morally abrasive protagonists and structurally chaotic psychological fiction.
It’s an accessible yet quietly devastating feminist novel, precisely because it refuses melodrama in favour of accumulated realism.
It’s sharp, compulsively readable, deeply stressful in a good way, and unexpectedly emotionally perceptive beneath its chaotic surface.
It’s one of Kawakami’s most emotionally sprawling works, and perhaps one of her bleakest.
It’s not a novel that announces its intentions immediately. But once it settles into its rhythm, it becomes difficult to look away.