humdrum_ts 's review for:

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

3.5

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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There are always growing pains in the transition from short story or novella to a full novel. Transitions are difficult at the best of times, and I often find myself spotting the seams where additions have been welded onto a complete work. Mieko Kawakami’s approach is to not even make an attempt at concealment: the original novella surges to a climax, reaches its resolution, and then there’s an abrupt jump to a different scenario at a different time. It’s a hard shift in no small part because the novella is a gem, a perfectly-paced examination of three women at different stages of life, grappling with family, femininity, and poverty… while the remainder centers on the favorite topic of middle-aged authors: middle-aged authors. The first part prefers to show, the second part loves to slowly talk through its central issue from every angle. The first part uses its family dynamic to full effect, the second deliberately isolates the narrator. It started to become a book I had to force myself through. Then the book comes alive again in its final act, finally revealing the rhymes that make the stories a couplet and managing a moving ending - if only it had managed that a little sooner, I would have been blown away.