The last book I read was a winner of the Pulitzer, this one was a winner of the Nobel prize for literature and both of them were HARD GOING. May just avoid winners of major prizes in future.

This book is one that will torment me for a long time, it's words lingering on. It's ability to understand human emotions and thoughts at it's most rawest form is shocking. I can't tell what's scarier, the fact that such words are put to paper or that I find them relatable...

2.5 stars!! this book is so difficult to rate but as much as this book is a literary masterpiece it was quite difficult for me to grasp some ideas and the narrator’s world. Maybe it’s because of my lack of knowledge on the culture and the consequences of the war. But i would still recommend it to people for the way the book is written!

Picked this up at a bookstore because of the cover alone. And I'll be honest, I drifted in and out of this plot-wise, but the end gripped me, and the descriptions always took me there. Take this close of the opening paragraph: "With a sense of resignation, I take upon me once more the heavy flesh, dully aching in every part and disintegrated though it is. I've been sleeping with arms and legs askew, in the posture of a man reluctant to be reminded either of his nature or of the situation in which he finds himself." The gruesome, the body and the anguish of living in it, the macabre, disgust, the textures of mist and sinews and the eerie groans and whistles and the weight of the world, it is all described beautifully, viscerally... I felt seen, understood by all those descriptions peppered through the novel. Whenever I drifted out, I'd get caught again by a sentence that took my breath away.

The subjects too are fascinating: how death and our obsessive coping with it can infect the family, how madness can make the ones you love seem alien, can make yourself seem alien, how we become imbued in networks of other peoples' judgements and how we find ways to escape it.

I took a long time thinking about how I felt about this book. I think ultimately it was a 2.75 star for me. I didn't like it. It was a grueling read and so bleak and full of horrific human beings and I hated the first 75% of the book. However. The last 25% turned it around enough for me to feel satisfied by the ending especially in light of what came before. I don't think I could ever recommend this book to anyone without a very specific set of requirements, but I have come to terms with my own reading of it.

depressing but cool

demasiado deprimente.

I could learn interesting things about japanese culture and that's pretty cool. But I didn't know this book could be that tragic. :/