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A review by cmccollum
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami
4.0
All the Lovers in the Night is a quiet read. Similar to Breasts and Eggs I liked the last 20% the best. It was beautiful and achingly sad. There are a million ways to show how lonely a person is without saying it aloud, and Kawakami explores them all. The prose really shined in this book, and my favorite passages were those describing light.
"As I walk through the night, I remember what Mitsutsuka said to me. “Because at night, only half the world remains.” I count the lights. All the lights of the night. The red light at the intersection, trembling as if wet, even though it isn’t raining. Streetlight after streetlight. Taillights trailing off into the distance. The soft glow from the windows. Phones in the hands of people just arriving home, and people just about to go somewhere. Why is the night so beautiful? Why does it shine the way it does? Why is the night made up entirely of light?"
"The afternoon sun came up like a flood and made me squint. The plaza just outside the building looked like a sea without water, while the hands on the clock, standing like a sword thrust in the ground, pointed to three on the dot."
"Outside the window, the layers of twilight spread across the sky were being steadily eroded by the night, from which emerged the bright faces of the students, chatting as they walked, a bicycle speeding up now and then to pass them, bells ringing when their paths crossed. With my lips pressed to my cup, I gazed into the thickness of the night, an inky substance that filled the space between that which moved and that which did not."
"As I walk through the night, I remember what Mitsutsuka said to me. “Because at night, only half the world remains.” I count the lights. All the lights of the night. The red light at the intersection, trembling as if wet, even though it isn’t raining. Streetlight after streetlight. Taillights trailing off into the distance. The soft glow from the windows. Phones in the hands of people just arriving home, and people just about to go somewhere. Why is the night so beautiful? Why does it shine the way it does? Why is the night made up entirely of light?"
"The afternoon sun came up like a flood and made me squint. The plaza just outside the building looked like a sea without water, while the hands on the clock, standing like a sword thrust in the ground, pointed to three on the dot."
"Outside the window, the layers of twilight spread across the sky were being steadily eroded by the night, from which emerged the bright faces of the students, chatting as they walked, a bicycle speeding up now and then to pass them, bells ringing when their paths crossed. With my lips pressed to my cup, I gazed into the thickness of the night, an inky substance that filled the space between that which moved and that which did not."