A review by lizaliza5
Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto

hopeful lighthearted reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.5

Miss Banana is my favorite author of all time, so my biased opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. This book is 366 pages of aimless rambling with pretty minor plot development and basically no action scenes. I would read Miss Banana's grocery list, so I had fun reading it. I love her descriptions of the scenery and how the characters feel in every moment. This book can be boring for people who don't like that sort of thing. Definitely not my favorite Banana Book but it wasn't my least favorite. In her author's note at the end she acknowledges that this book is naive and she feels a bit embarrassed by it. It does feel like a young book by a young writer, but if you can forgive a little meandering around a very minute plot, there's some very beautiful prose in here. Perfect for the aimless feeling of your 20's when everything feels temporary, you miss your friends and you know things won't be the same again as you move around and figure out what you want to do. I will say some of the comments made are very tasteless. Like when they go to the beach and they get tan, and she calls them "black" and there's a few weird comments like how when her 10 year old brother grows up all the girls will like him.

I thought the fact that Sakumi gets with Mayu's ex is very fucking weird. but Miss Banana writes these scenarios that seem like just too much as if when they happen, everything can still be ok. But actually fuck Ryuichiro wtf was that about him cheating on her in the epilogue and she stayed with him??? WEIRD. definitely could have cut that out of the final draft.