A review by thebookhunter
Where Europe Begins by Yōko Tawada

2.0

I really wanted to enjoy this, and at first I did! The first story of the collection, "The Bath", is really strong and very Kafkaesque in its own right. However, as the stories continued, I saw how Tawada seemingly cared more about her writing structure and form. This is, after all, Tawada battling between two languages, her native Japanese and German. This creates a rather "fairy-tale" and dreamlike writing style, which can be nice, if purposeful. For me, however, a lot of Tawada's story just fell flat due to their lack of purpose. Maybe it just went over my head, but this seems like a case of an author attempting to experiment with their form at the consequence of losing much-needed connections to plot and character. I would definitely try Tawada again, but this was mostly disappointing.