(I accidentally spilled a pint of water on top of my copy before I even started reading it and it’s completely water-damaged…fits the theme, I guess.)

Disturbing stories, but mainly not in a way I personally like. There’s some weird and off-putting fatphobia in the first two stories and the third story is very ableist.

Seeing that the first story is from a perspective of a mean person, I could’ve seen the fatphobia being a part of her character, but as it continued in the next story with new characters, I bet it’s Ogawa’s learned bigotry towards fat people… Japanese culture is inherently fatphobic so…

The third story is where things get veeeery unpleasant for me. Once again, almost all cultures are inherently ableist…but the way Ogawa write’s about the physically disabled side-character was very unpleasant: at the same time patronizing and leering…