The 4.3 stars from 1,400 reviews on Amazon had me expecting this to be a great book. It's not. The characters have little depth, as do the chapters, which are more like short stories. (This is more of an anthology of four interconnected stories than a novel.) One of the stories is good, two are okay, and one is just bad.

Sometimes a book with poor storytelling can be saved by brilliant writing. This is not one of those books. It's possible that some of the author's literary prowess was lost in translation, but there's no way a translator could present something so poorly written and still find work. Kawaguchi seems to be on a mission to break every rule about how to write well.

I'm stunned (not really) this got published and has received such praise. Fortunately it's a quick read that you can probably finish before the coffee gets... never mind. I'll show myself out.