Scan barcode
A review by knod78
The Great Passage by Shion Miura
4.0
This completes May (originally April) Northern Asia of the Read Around the World: Book Voyage Reading Challenge. I didn't know what to think of this book when it started. It was slow and choppy and jumped through time, but I was in it. The darn book made me want to work on a dictionary and I didn't think a book could be that powerful. And yet here I am looking up jobs churning out dictionaries.
The characters were all great characters; however, with such a short book, I just wished the author spent more time on them instead of adding more characters to the mix. I liked Kashibe, but she was thrown in at the end at a time 15 years later after getting used to Nishioka.
But the descriptions on how to put the dictionary together and choosing the right words and the right definitions and the revisions were fascinating. I feel like with what is happening in America with words and banned words and the power of words, this book has an even more powerful layer than the author maybe intended to have. I actually wanted more and feel that this book should have been longer, delved more in to every nook and cranny of more words and how some of the other words effected characters. I loved that we got a snipit of Kashibe and her response to male/female terms and love in terms of sexual orientation. She related it to her own feelings and her own experience with a friend. I needed more of that with other characters. I especially loved that we got Majimes full love letter at the end. I'm not sure what I would do if I got a letter like that either.
Again, this book will make you want to eat glorious food in Japan while taking a break from deciding on whether we should tie male and female terms to childbirth and drinking some good sake. Kompai!
The characters were all great characters; however, with such a short book, I just wished the author spent more time on them instead of adding more characters to the mix. I liked Kashibe, but she was thrown in at the end at a time 15 years later after getting used to Nishioka.
But the descriptions on how to put the dictionary together and choosing the right words and the right definitions and the revisions were fascinating. I feel like with what is happening in America with words and banned words and the power of words, this book has an even more powerful layer than the author maybe intended to have. I actually wanted more and feel that this book should have been longer, delved more in to every nook and cranny of more words and how some of the other words effected characters. I loved that we got a snipit of Kashibe and her response to male/female terms and love in terms of sexual orientation. She related it to her own feelings and her own experience with a friend. I needed more of that with other characters. I especially loved that we got Majimes full love letter at the end. I'm not sure what I would do if I got a letter like that either.
Again, this book will make you want to eat glorious food in Japan while taking a break from deciding on whether we should tie male and female terms to childbirth and drinking some good sake. Kompai!