“Margaret Atwood came to fiction by way of poetry, as did Michael Ondaatje and Wole Soyinka. In their novels, as in those of the Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami, who wrote songs and poems before turning to fiction, the attention to sensory experience is particularly keen, concise, and meaningful....Bett and Boyd conjure the poet’s sensibility of Kawakami’s prose with great skill... How to cope with feelings, the awful intensity of them, is a central question in Kawakami’s novels...The startling vividness of Kawakami’s images draws the reader deeper into the emotional intensity of the scenes....[she] has good instincts for creating an air of suspense, although that’s not what sets her novels apart. It’s her ability to make the mere passing of time, choosing to step outside and be alive, seem like an event.”
Read the full review in The Atlantic.
