A review by papapete24
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

emotional sad fast-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

3.5

I've spent the last few years on a journey through the landscape of Japanese literature. There's a quick classification for most modern Japanese literature between what we might categorize as soft, cat literature that is warm, quiet, and emphasizes traditional elements of Japan's culture (book covers often with cats, coffee, changing seasons) and then there is a darker, serious literature that traces a lineage from Soseki and Kokoro or Kawabata and Snow Country or Oe and A Private Matter. While there are pleasures to be found in the trend of soft Japanese lit (I recently read Days at the Morisaki Bookshop), I prefer a harder edged modern literature from Japan. Mieko Kawakami clearly falls into the latter category. From my perspective, she simply seems uninterested in telling the soft, glossy stories of Japanese society and prefers to delve into fictional lives that illustrates how people on the other side of the tracks are living.  In Heaven, the darker side centers around brutal bullying in Japanese schools (almost too much for me to read). In Breasts and Eggs, Kawakami writes what many probably consider a Feminist novel plumbing the modern and historic sexism in Japan and the devaluing of women to their reproductive capabilities. I further think it is also a great example of what academics call intersectionality where the main character is a woman and also was raised in poverty, carrying the generational trauma with her into her current life. Breasts and Eggs is a stunning novel. In All The Lovers in the Night, we have a female protagonist that will make some choices and habits that are confounding to the reader. There is some trauma and especially trauma that influences how she tries to connect to the opposite sex. There is also commentary around how women in Japan can have professional aspirations without being criticized for the independence and sexuality. I believe that many readers will not find Lovers as engaging as her previous work. There are some beautiful passages on the nature of light and the night, but the overall inaction of the character and the story will ultimately not find this slim novel as compelling as Breasts and Eggs. 3.5 Stars.