All The Lovers In The Night

Another Japanese novel that I am unsure about. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, I wanted to keep reading, I’m just not sure what I think about the main character.

The story of a 30 something female proof reader who seems to drift through life without achieving much. She does give up job to go freelance but this doesn’t really change much other than introducing us to Hijiri, her editor. Perhaps she is an intentional contrast as she does seem to live life to the full and encourages Yukiru, our protagonist to do the same, even donating a bunch of clothes better than any Yukiru has.

Our heroine does visit a community centre to sign up for a class but that doesn’t go well, although she meets a man and develops a rather distant relationship with him that doesn’t really go anywhere.

At times I got this confused in my head with “Strange Weather in Tokyo” (older woman meets high school teacher) as there were parallels, so had to go back over earlier chapters to get things straight in my head.

Did I enjoy this? I’m not sure – largely because I don’t know how to feel about the main character. She doesn’t really seem to get anywhere in this story. I did read it all and I don’t regret doing so – it made me think and that can only be a good thing.