A review by luc3sca
Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

dark emotional sad tense fast-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? It's complicated

3.75

I’ve heard great things about this book and I wanted to love it, but I can’t. It left me feeling really empty and confused. I feel like I’m missing something. For example I didn’t really understand Kojima’s character. Every time we saw her it felt like she was a different person. And Momose’s small speech he gave to the main character when they met outside the hospital kind of just melted into confusing rambling for me. The timeline in this book is also hard to grasp because Kawakami doesn’t really differentiate between what’s happening in the present and what’s a flashback. One thing near the end that completely threw me off was that on page 111, it says that the calendar reads Decemeber 1991, but then on page 134 it says that it’s November? Am I misunderstanding something? I also felt the masturbation parts were really strange and jarring, I honestly felt sick at page 152. 
Maybe I’ll re-read this again sometime, because this left me extremely confused. 
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