Reviews with content warning for Rape - All the Lovers in the Night

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Reviews tagging 'Rape'

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

380 reviews

inxbloom's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I’m really unsure how to rate the book. On the one hand is this how my sobriety journey kind of felt like. I could relate with Fuyuko on many different occasions. Someone who struggles to form connections with other people, in her addiction, keeping herself small, trying to please everybody but her.
Just as I thought the book was starting to grow on me -as I really disliked the first 2/3 of it- it took another turn that made me go “are you for fvcking real?”.
I really felt sorry for Fuyuko, but other than that, I mostly just disliked the book.
Her work bestie, who claims to be a feminist, spends several pages bashing other women for doing things she doesn’t approve of and just glorifies being a workaholic.
The love interest really gave me hope. I really liked him. He helped Fuyuko (probably unbeknownst to him) get through many of her problems,

just to abandon her again.

At some point I was able to excuse the pace of the book. The way it was written matched the way life felt for me, when I was living away, getting drunk every day. Life felt so small and mundane. I also did enjoy how she got to grow through all of it. Nevertheless it was still kind of hard for me to push through and almost all of my annotations are “wtf?” annotations, so I’ll just leave it at 2.25 stars, I suppose.
Also what even does “The chubby woman smiles and asked if I could donate blood today. For some reason, her smiling face reminded me of a head of cabbage split perfectly in two” mean?????

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kez07's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

At first I was unsure of this book. My feelings kept changing while reading it and at a certain point, it hit me how important it would end up feeling. Fuyuko is flawed in many ways but she tries to open herself up to more in her relationships. The people around her are also flawed, but they seem to care for her. Seeing her struggle with alcoholism and with how others perceive her felt uncomfortable and at times embarrassing but that’s the point. It’s life. I loved it and I’m glad I didn’t let the uncomfortable feeling overpower this book since it was also incredibly delicate and intimate at times. At a certain point, I was picturing what I thought it would look like in film, the lighting would be incredible with the way Fuyuko sees it and she would look normal and fine until it switches to the perspective of the viewer/stranger and it would show her slurring her words, or stumbling a little.

I can’t help but think of that scene with Mitsusuka where she tells him that she was drunk all the previous times they met, and he said he knew, but he likes her company no matter which version he meets with. That nearly made me cry.

This was truly an incredible book.

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mosscrumble's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

before the 3/4 mark i probably would have given this book only 3.5 stars. there is a lot that doesnt get addressed or challenged early on so it feels like these triggering topics are being glossed over without much discussion. later on it becomes apparent that fuyuko is coping with her life that way, hence the way the topics are written. fuyuko as a character comes to life a lot more in the end of the book, where she is starting to take agency in her life, and i particularly like how the books ends out with hijiri. of all the people who talk and talk at fuyuko one-sided throughout, hijiri is the only one who makes an active attempt to get to know fuyuko despite her own character flaws

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