Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - All the Lovers in the Night

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All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

17 reviews

rosalux's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

This book is a brilliant depiction of the loneliness that encapsulates life in modernity.
How difficult it is to not be a zombie; how hard it is to make friends and keep them; how excruciating to be vulnerable and expose your soft underside to a cold and uncaring world.

Yet, it’s worth it (in brief random spurts).

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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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strawberriie's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

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thesapphiccelticbookworm's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

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sillycreature's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Leave it to Mieko Kawakami to create the most beautiful visuals and lyrical descriptions of what listening to your favorite song feels like. I also enjoyed the brief lessons on how light and colors work.

I could relate quite a bit to Fuyuko, and to me, this story served as an important reminder on what it REALLY means to have a real, genuine connection to someone.
(To put it in a nutshell, take the time to get to know the other person in depth and, in turn, allow yourself to be known and seen and heard as well. It needs to go both ways.)

Did NOT see that ending coming, but I can't say I was disappoined.

In fact, I quite liked the subversion of expectations. It goes back to the previous idea of knowing someone & being known in return. Fuyuko barely shared anything about herself, and also never got to know Mitsutsuka on a deeper level, opting instead to daydream about him or stay mostly silent during their hangouts instead of asking those questions she had in her mind, to get to know him better. In turn, Mitsutsuka himself avoided to tell the truth about who he really was from the very beginning - perhaps out of shame, or simply because it was great to be somebody else for a little while. Maybe he felt lonely, too. Maybe he knew that, if they were to get closer, Fuyuko would eventually find out he wasn't at all what he said he was. Maybe he got scared and that's why he ran away. So they pretty much remained strangers to each other all throughout their "relationship".
Same thing with Hijiri's wish to know Fuyuko better - whether she wanted to get closer to and manipulate Fuyuko, or whether that actually was a genuine plea for connection: "I want to know you better. I want to know you, so I can be your friend, too." I like to think it's the latter reason, but it could be either one.

I only wish we'd gotten more of a glimpse on how Fuyuko's friendship with Hijiri developed after the end of chapter 12.

With that last paragraph, I like to believe that Fuyuko went on to write this very book that we're reading right now, and named it "All the Lovers in the Night". I like to believe that, with these six words, with this book, she finally found her voice.

All in all, every character had its flaws, but Kawakami wrote them in such a way that their personalities & motivations were believable and, most of all, very human - which is why I found all the characters likeable in some way and worthy of consideration.

Except for Mizuno, he can die in the hole he crawled out of for doing what he did and for having the absolute NERVE to blame it all on Fuyuko - and on TOP of that, to say that SHE pisses HIM off. While I can understand his frustrations with a stagnant, pre-determined life in a small town, and wanting to leave somewhere far away, to create his own identity & make a different, better life for himself, NOTHING could EVER justify what he did.

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hue's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

There's just something so remarkable in the way Mieko Kawakami writes. I'm so enveloped in her world at first word. To think none of these people are real. I can't wrap my head around it.

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elisa_rachel's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.0

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maecaitlin's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes

3.75

Interesting exploration of trauma and recovery. I found Fuyoka’s late-bloomer development to be a great depiction of life after a traumatic event.

As a result, her finding a gentle love in Mitsutsuka feels tender and sweet.

Kawakami’s writing is blunt and sometimes misses the mark for my taste. I particularly enjoyed the motif of a solo walk every Christmas Eve/Fuyoka’s Birthday, yet I wish there was more of a fleshed-out exploration of what this means to the character. However, I am mindful of and unsure if some meaning is lost in translation.

I feel Kawakami’s characters will live in my head for a long while as they feel very close to anyone who has ever felt like an outsider.

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chrisljm's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

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

2.0

I'm sure the mundanity and passiveness of the main character is important to the story, but I couldn't stand it. It was very frustrating to read how she interacted with other characters, but specifically her lack of response when communicating with them or the way she constantly repeated what they said. I also found the book to be dull and dry, and often times the monologues (particularly with one character) came off insincere and preachy. All the Lovers in the Night is described as "insightful, entertaining, and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry" but I strongly disagree. The storytelling was so overwhelmingly monotonous that I wasn't emotionally engaged at all.

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soyboysimon's review against another edition

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sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

Didn't love this, I feel truly neutral about it. Its like i was reading only to get to the end of it. i didn't connect with any of the characters or their problems, the main characters troubles seemed self-inflicted, and I absolutely hate the way it talks about—or rather doesn't talk about—mental health.

The main character is dealing with a number of things,

anxiety, depression, alcoholism, an eating disorder, recovery from rape

, but they are presented as being normal parts of life that she has to conquer on her own, without help, before she can let herself be loved. Its sick and twisted to me, it wasn't good for me, I don't recommend it if you deal with any of these problems.

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