PositiveThe Guardian (UK)... another fresh and sharp story about life under late capitalism ... Translator Lizzie Buehler deftly coveys the subtle tonalities of the prose, variously graceful and light...witty and absurd, then suspenseful, even terror-filled. Descriptions of the climactic disaster are flattened and attenuated, becoming strangely euphoric as the narrative focuses on all the anonymous lives shattered, people dispossessed by forces beyond any of the characters’ imaginations. Ultimately, the plot details aren’t always precise enough to convey the complexity of exactly what is at stake, or with whom moral responsibility sits, while a tenuous love story adds another layer of narrative complication. But this is an entertaining eco-thriller that sets out to illuminate the way climate change is inextricably bound up with the pressures of global capitalism.
Mieko Kawakami, trans. by Sam Bett and David Boyd
PositiveWords Without BordersIf the pulsing center of the story is hard to find, it’s because there isn’t one exactly. Kawakami, like Natsu herself, creates a literary form that bears witness to the many stories and hardships of working-class and single women ... The novel is at its most beautiful and urgent when it presses toward such crystalline epiphanies, even if the story runs out of steam or reaches a conclusion that seems forced or sentimental. Occasionally, the narrative pauses, and in turn makes the reader pause, breathless{.]
Marcel Proust, Trans. by Lydia Davis
RaveAsymptote JournalThere is some attentiveness to form here, and to the polite conventions of twentieth-century letter writing, but there is fluidity, too — some element of lived experience that cannot be shaped into the narrative arc of a novel or bound by the stylistic rules of poetry ...letters are inflected by fine observations and moments of deep empathy. They are suffused with the intimate textures of daily life — flowers and fragrance — and allow us an insight into the larger social context of the time, with reports of the wounded returning from war ...elegant, charming, tender; occasionally hastily scribbled with heavy underlinings, as seen in the facsimiles; sometimes accompanied by tasteful gifts of books, roses and carnations, even pheasants ...adds greatly to our understanding of Proust’s life and work.