I felt like there was much joy in how Keiko had found her place in life, and fulfillment through doing a good job at the convenience store. Nicely critical of the way the people around her -- her so-called friends -- can't accept the choices she's made that make her happy and keep trying to push her into something else. The only sour note for me was Shiraha; I get why he's in the story, but every page with him on it was so unpleasant (perhaps I'd become weirdly protective of Keiko?) that I enjoyed the last third of the book much less than the preceding two-thirds.
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50% complete! pdotb has read 26 of 52 books.
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pdotb finished reading Convenience Store Woman by 村田沙耶香
Convenience Store Woman by 村田沙耶香
Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in …
pdotb reviewed Convenience Store Woman by 村田沙耶香
Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how …
Great except...
4 stars
Content warning spoilers
pdotb started reading Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino
pdotb started reading You Have to Say Something by Dainin Katagiri
pdotb finished reading Radical Dharma by Angel Kyodo Williams
Radical Dharma by Angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens, Jasmine Syedullah
"Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays out in society at large …
pdotb started reading Convenience Store Woman by 村田沙耶香
Convenience Store Woman by 村田沙耶香
Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in …
pdotb finished reading Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu
Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu
Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, Kazu’s life is tied by a series of coincidences …
pdotb started reading Posthuman Gothic by Anya Heise-von der Lippe
pdotb finished reading These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
Security expert Dora left her anarchist commune over safety concerns. But when her ex-girlfriend Kay is killed, everyone at the …
Security expert Dora left her anarchist commune over safety concerns. But when her ex-girlfriend Kay …
Noir, but much more
4 stars
I haven't read a lot of noir, probably because it's always seemed just a bit too cynical. 'These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart' translates noir into a dystopian near future with an anarchist commune and a trans MC, still feels like it has a lot of the key components of noir, but has so much more heart as it wrestles with what it is to be human, particularly a flawed one trying to find one's way in the world.
pdotb started reading Radical Dharma by Angel Kyodo Williams
Radical Dharma by Angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens, Jasmine Syedullah
"Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays out in society at large …
pdotb started reading These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
Security expert Dora left her anarchist commune over safety concerns. But when her ex-girlfriend Kay is killed, everyone at the …
pdotb finished reading Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono
pdotb reviewed Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono
Weird but weirdly-compelling
4 stars
Collection of somewhat dark short stories (and I'm not sure 'Toddler-Hunting' is even the oddest), but when you get past the shock value there's lots to reflect on concerning topics such as marriage, childhood, illness, and death, but particularly through the lens of a woman in Japan in the sixties and the choices available, or not.