Oh what a lovely gentle book. Maybe that makes it sound twee and of no consequence but that is not the case. It isn’t full of adventure, mystery, drama or intrigue...it is full of real human emotion but the sort of every day emotions that build a very real life. At first I thought the narrator was too vague and flimsy...if you could reach into the book and take hold of her arm, your hand would go through her ...no substance....but now I have finished the book and thinking about it I was wrong. It is just that this book is delicate..the story is told so gently that you feel you are observing it through a window. I can’t explain this...but I loved that feeling.
I think Yoko Ogawa writes about older people well, she did that in The Memory Police and again here. She does it by observation not pointing out and making a big issue of ‘imagining’ how it might be to be old in an obvious way...it is rare to see older people depicted so gently...and she does it with a kind compassion. By saying very little she created a world I walked in for a while.
Maybe some people have been questioning about the details of the 80 minute rule...I feel that the precise workings of that were not important...I just accepted it all because the story is about so much more.
Oh and I loved the maths.
And the untold story...that is hinted at in the thesis. Sooo much to imagine there.