![]() ![]() ![]() Her characters fall in and out of love in a whim and struggle to communicate when left alone with each other. Kawakami is a master of uncomfortable intimacy and desire. Just a magnetic presence, searching for love but never finding it (not at least in a permanent way), longing to remember and to be remembered. Mr Nishino may remain an enigma but there’s no mystery to be solved here, no puzzle to put together. Throughout these chapters, presented out of chronological order, we get glimpses from Nishino’s story and personality but never in a complete manner, never coming together in a big reveal of a bigger picture. Our lives are not narratives and rarely offer us closure, and neither do Kawakami’s works. In a more traditional book, we could expect a closing chapter that shifts focalization to Nishino, finally offering us his point of view, but not here. Part of this is to do with a resistance to (easy) explanations, to clear meanings and statements. ![]() It may be a cliché, but I always end up remembering them by what I feel is missing in their stories. I’ve always loved how Kawakami structures her books almost as collections of fragments, full of empty spaces and half-suggested events. ![]()
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