mieko kawakami had once caught again me at the perfect time, just as i was experiencing another heartbreak from a similar situation to the main character irie.
i've been sensing a pattern within kawakami's book: a slow body, an incident that leaves the character in a state of depression, an emotional climax that reveals the story's theme, and the hopeful resolution. there were a lot i feel kawakami brought up though i don't know if i'm only seeing things on my end. one is what i believe the central theme of the story which is isolation and lack of choice as form of comfort, a comfort zone. i don't think i phrased that right but i hope you get what i mean. irie has said herself that she had not made a decision in her life and she felt she had deluded herself into thinking she controlled her life when really she let people choose for her because it's easy. this is what irie thought of in her depression, this is what hijiri's outburst told irie. it is easier to never ask anyone of anything because they never ask anything of you in return. it's the desire to be seen beating through the fear of being known. reading this i thought i wasn't much like irie. sure the introversion and the isolation, but i am not at all passive, in fact i am quite stubborn. i make my decisions and i fight for them, but this hit me like shrapnel. it is easier this way, it's terribly lonely, but it's the least painful, but is it really? or is it just a different kind of pain?
i also saw some of kawakami's more female-centered perspective shine through (i hesitate to call this feminist even though it may be because i may be reading this horribly wrong and i don't know enough about kawakami to say this other than the fact that she wrote breast and eggs) through the character of hijiri. it's the scene where a character talked about how hijiri slept around and was careless with men. she then gifted irie the same perfume hijiri gifted her. such a succinct way to make a point and i could interpret this in multiple ways. first is that hijiri and said character are not at all different. this could mean that they are both promiscuous women who therefore have no reason tearing each other down, or that hijiri isn't that promiscuous at all and therefore has no reason to be torn down. this could also point even more towards irie alienation from other women, highlighting that hijiri and said character are similar but irie is isolated, different.
and then there is mitsutsuka. mitsutsuka to me is simply a person irie knows very little about and still manages to fall in love with. in irie's loneliness and isolation, she falls in love with the first person who actually sees her, who listens to her talk and gives her the time of day. i wanted to argue that this could have also been hijiri but their relationship in the beginning felt off-balanced: hijiri always talked and irie always listened. hijiri openly talked about the kind of people she despised and it was clear that irie was that kind of person. she is openly talking about this to irie because she doesn't know she is like that, because how would she? no, mitsutsuka stood out in that regard. but she knows nothing about him, she wrote a letter and didn't know his address and he wasn't who irie thought he was. mitsutsuka by extension represented heartbreak, and is so far the most poignant to me personally.
there was also light, often relating to mitsutsuka. the motif of lights were everywhere. i could browse through the book tomorrow because it's far too late in the evening right now but it could be love and by extension, heartbreak. i also really like the dynamic between irie and hijiri. i love me a good foil character, and the "confrontation" in the end was wonderful. their friendship at the very end was so clearly different to the relationship they had at the beginning which pointed to a healthy resolution between the two. due to their stark differences, there had always been this low humming tension between the two. i liked hijiri through and through, i feel she is an interesting character and probably could have been the main character of a different story. her desire in the end to be a true friend to irie revitalized the humanness of her character, like this was something that was ongoing away from the reader's point of view. i really like that, hijiri was not at all distracting in the story or even a main character but she was an interesting and well-rounded foil to irie.
heaven and all the lovers in the night have convinced me to totally get breast and eggs next time i'm at the bookstore and is further solidifying kawakami's place as one of my favorite authors. she gets me so well. i will also be using this book when writing my own novel of a similar premise. i'm still in the very very very rough draft and storyboarding phase but honestly, kawakami's writing is only inspiring even further to write.