A review by michaelclorah
Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi

3.0

A testament to modern life, this 1970 book is about a young couple who seek to get ahead in life, but their own ambivalence keeps holding them back. They smoke, drink and procrastinate, they neglect each other and let their body language betray their loss of feeling for each other. It's pretty bleak stuff, but drawn in a very engaging, impressionist style. It's emotionally challenging and worthwhile, but the plot itself is muddy and hard to follow. The characters difficult to distinguish, the body language hard to read, and the dropped-in symbolic images obtuse. Lots of promise in this one, and there are some really great moments in it, but I found it too abstract to follow through on its premise.