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.