Particularly when she gets introspective, which there is plenty of in this novel. I should have just listened to Luce’s review on this one, but even when the book was eye rollingly annoying I pressed on because I really do enjoy Kawakami’s storytelling. It was one of the saddest moments I’ve ever known.’
More wonderful than anything I had ever known. Having very much loved The Nakano Thrift Shop and Strange Weather in Tokyo, this book was quite a disappointment despite having Kawakami’s signature calm and poetic prose and an exciting and effective narrative structure. Kawakami does well to show that even the worst of people have deep pains and scars and to remind us of empathy, though humanizing a sexual predator is an odd choice and even if you can feel for him it doesn’t mean I want to spend much time with him. However, this book would be more aptly titled Ten Victims than Lovers and Nishino is such unbearable garbage manipulating his way into bedrooms and sobbing about his inability to remain monogamous as if it should make him pitiable instead of repulsive. What really works here is the way Kawakami has each chapter from a different woman’s perspective, focusing more on them than Nishino, who slowly comes into focus as we perceive him from teenage years to his death from the vantage points of those who he slept with. The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami, beautifully translated by Allison Markin Powell, revolves around women who have fallen for the cool womanizer-Yukihiko Nishino-and how it has impacted their lives. There’s a whole industry of storytelling about that with many common tropes like enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, you get the point.
‘ If there was anyone I hated, it was likely to be Nishino.’
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