by Yoko Ogawa

This book… was not my cup of tea.

I got the sense that the book was kind of just wandering forward and figuring itself out as it went, without grand vision. The premise was extremely compelling, but I don’t feel like the author stayed focused on—or really tried to explore at all—any of the themes presented at the outset.

This sense of wandering was reenforced by the fact that the protagonist, a novelist, writes her own novels this way: a few pages at a time, not knowing where she’s taking the narrative.

Is this how most books are written? Do I just know nothing about the creative writing process? A few pages from the end, I was further put off by this quote from the protagonist’s editor:

“The meaning isn’t important. What matters is the story hidden deep in the words. You’re at the point now where you’re trying to extract that story.”

Is that the author trying to cop-out her writing style?

If I, the reader, was able to extract a story from these words: the story entails people shrug and make do as the government bans more and more aspects of their daily lives. Published in English 2019, it made for a coincidental, topical pandemic read.

But beyond that… I didn’t particularly enjoy reading it, and I wasn’t able to take anything away from it.