All The Lovers In The Night Paperback – 11 May 2023

This is such a haunting yet beautiful story. I love Mieko Kawakami's writing style, it is mesmerising and lyrical flowing swiftly through our minds. This story especially is a tale of identity and confidence a woman needs in her life but has to earn it all on her own.

All the lovers in the night by Mieko Kawakami is a sad, disturbing and highly impactful story about a 30 yo woman named Fuyuko working as a freelance proofreader. Fuyuko lives an isolated life and isn’t really into socialising. She has no hobbies, no meaningful relationships, no passion for the job she does. She has one person, Hijiri with whom she is regularly in contact. However, her life begins to change when she meets Mitsutsuka, a physics teacher.All the lovers in the night is about a woman who has always been alone even as kid. It’s about how badly she wants to change everything but the idea of it haunts her.The novel revolves around her finding the courage to actively make decisions instead of just avoiding to make any choices and mistakes.Kawakami is a writer I'll continue to read whatever she writes. Her outlook on life, particularly for those who don't fit in, is a unique perspective to read.

The book and print is great. The book however was super slow and I don't like the characters so far.

Beautiful and heartbreaking

This is the story about a freelance proofreader, Fuyuko, who is in her mid thirties. She is friends with Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition.Fuyuko feels lost in life. Something happened in her past and that event has somehow shaped her life. But her life seems to change for the better when she meets Mitsutsuka.This book is mostly conversations between Fuyuko and Hijiri and Mitsutsuka. I enjoyed the conversations about proofreading and light.I also found Fuyuko an extremely relatable character. I could relate to her on so many levels. The writing was also beautiful.But this book had no solid plot and the story of Fuyuko and Mitsutsuka seems incomplete and I guess that was the whole point of the book but I wished there was a closure to their story.This book is kinda sad, now come to think about it. Fuyuko’s life and mental health keeps degrading as she is trying to survive. But Mitsutsuka brings a little solace into her drab life. I felt sympathetic towards her.Overall, I enjoyed my time reading this book. I would definitely recommend this book!

Bought from uRead-Store and they did not disappoint. Original copy and did not get damaged in the delivery process at all. I haven’t read the book but I am sure this will be another great read just like Heaven and Breast and eggs by the same author.

Product is slightly damaged. The front cover is bent from the upper right corner in various places.

Mieko Kawakami’s All the lovers in the night is a deceptive piece of work. Unadorned of any narrative trickery or moral high handedness that mars so much of today’s literature, her book is an unsparing but thoughtful look at one Japanese woman’s life.Fuyuko Irie is a 34 year old woman who works as a freelance proofreader. She is painfully shy and introverted.No, let's scratch those words because the kind of loneliness that afflicts Fuyuko can’t be contained by easily digestible words of pop psychology. Her loneliness is bone deep, and seems to be self-inflicted, until a major flashback reveals its traumatic roots.Kawakami’s writing is spare and unpretentious. She doesn’t write with the aim of being poetic and lyrical. And yet, her sentences have the power to make you feel the things her characters are feeling. The smell of sweat and alcohol, or the look of light as it slants down from the busy street. Kawakami is a master of turning even the most mundane occurrences and objects to sites of monumental personal revelation. Her frank and uncomplicated style only makes her writing more enchanting.All the lovers in the night is a slender book but it has lofty themes that are universal even as the story focuses on the inner life of a lonely Japanese woman. By never looking down on her characters, and sentimentalizing their hardships, Kawakami has created a modern masterwork that punches you in the gut with its bald faced look at urban alienation and the hypocritical gender roles that are still prevalent in the Japanese society.