Category: Book Reviews

Review: Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto

4 March 2024

A short, riveting tale of a mystery that involves what seems to be nothing more than a tragic lover’s suicide quickly becomes quite an entrancing step-by-step deduction to the true motive behind two cyanide-filled corpses—a government worker and a waitress—turning up on a secluded beach in Hakata, Japan. Despite not expecting much, I thoroughly enjoyed…
Review: Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

26 February 2024

A tender, strange, and relatively short novella that explores love, age, and weirdness that forms our many life-long relationships. Following the lonesome and somewhat gloomy Tsukiko in her thirties, Strange Weather in Tokyo focuses on her deepening, almost-taboo and socially unacceptable relationship with the elderly Mr Matsumoto—nicknamed ‘Sensei’—who taught her Japanese in high school. In…
Review: A Place in the Woods by Helen Hoover

4 January 2024

A very calming recount of a lifestyle that has continued to die out as the years go by. A Place in the Woods tells the true story of Helen and Adrian Hoover as they leave their residence in Chicago to enjoy a life in the wilderness next to Lake Superior, just after the midpoint of…
Review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

23 December 2023

Beautiful, sombre, and touching. Often touted as Ishiguro’s most sincere and top-quality release, The Remains of the Day certainly earns that title. The story itself is unassuming, following Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, as he takes a short summer trip in his employer’s Ford. Despite being set in 1956, much of the story…
Review: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

29 November 2023

A return to form, that’s one way to put it. Klara and the Sun, as of writing, is Ishiguro’s latest in a strong library of works—but it seems to have prevailed as one of his more memorable novels. Following Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), the reader is introduced to a dystopian, near-future vision of American…
Review: King Lear by William Shakespeare

24 October 2023

King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s most notable and tolerable works. Despite how it seems, I actually say the latter part with good intent; remaining easy for modern audiences to follow, even after centuries of cultural and lingual change. The story of King Lear is one of corruption, loyalty, and good versus evil. After the…
Review: Back Story by David Mitchell

12 October 2023

Whilst I’m not one to indulge in the life or pasts of celebrities, it is interesting to learn about the growing pains of a successful, if ever awkward, British comedian. Mitchell’s autobiography is rather simple: it talks of his early life — childhood, school, and the troubles his parents endured — to his first foray…
Review: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

18 September 2023

An insight into the terrors of war and how we cope as people. Half of a Yellow Sun stands as a profound and significant work in addressing the Biafran War that divided Nigeria across the late 1960s. The novel follows three characters: Ugwu, a village boy turned servant; Olanna, the wife of Ugwu’s master; Richard,…
Review: The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki

6 September 2023

Well-written, intriguing, and rather insightful for a century-old work. The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga can now finally be conveniently enjoyed by English readers within the Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Told from the perspective of K, a Japanese novelist, the story concerns a strange and lively man, Tomoda Ginza, and a woman who…
Review: Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

23 August 2023

A quiet commentary buried under a somewhat unhappy tone; Breasts and Eggs, which was Mieko Kawakami’s first significant literary work, stands as an interesting read for this reason. Split into two halves (separated by a decade), we follow Natsu as she becomes a budding author and attempts to wrangle with the pressures of society, work,…