I’m reading along (I’ve read no further than the end of this week’s section)
I’ll catch up soon (I haven’t yet finished last week’s section)
I’ve read this book already but I’m here for discussion
I have no intention of catching up or the club has already finished, but I’m using the forums as reference
0voters
Vocab Sheet
Anybody should feel free to add to the vocab sheet. Read the guidelines on the first sheet- even if a word is not yet included you can use the spreadsheet as a tool to get help.
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading need to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as such.
Discussion Questions
Feel free to use these questions as a framework or a starting point for responses. I also encourage people to post their own discussion questions!
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
I’m not sure what to even say about this book. It’s so… Weird. I don’t even know if it’s necessarily weirder than her other books we’ve read, or just weird in a different way I don’t really know how to deal with.
What made her keep her mother confined in the other room? Like, how does this make sense for her character so far? The (ex)husband feels consistent as a character, so maybe I’m just missing something.
I actually finished the book last week. Having had some time for things to settle… Maybe we’re meant to see everything as a metaphor more than an actual story? It’s a lot of setup for that, though…
Anyone else have any ideas?
Also, that 解釈 at the end was … A lot. Took me so much longer to read! And… Didn’t really make things that much clearer. Did that guy read the same book? Maybe I’m just not intellectual enough, haha.
What the hell did I just read.
Maybe because of the language barrier, but some of the motivations weren’t well explained to me. This book definitely not my fav from Murata.
I don’t think it’s the language barrier. The language felt just as clear to me as in the other 村田沙耶香 books we read… and aside from the MC, the characters feel constant.
Yeeeeaaaahhhhhh… This was for sure a weird ending. It’s not the fact that it came totally out of left field, cause a lot of her endings are unexpected, but this ending doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense within the rest of the story. For a start, main character was always whinging about her mum being annoying and depressing, so why she’d want to spend more time with her is beyond me lol.
The mother had some stunningly expressive dialogue this week! A selection:
「……？」
「……」
「……！ ……！」
But yeah, all in all very much not a fave. I just wish the main character’s motivations made more (or any) sense.
Lmao, okay wow. I agree, it’s certainly not that great. While I did enjoy reading it and it did have some interesting things in it, the loose ends and the ending make it feel like it just fell apart and I’m not sure what to make of it story-wise.
Good to hear everyone felt about the same as me. I was really expecting the character to go somewhere that made sense to the story. But suddenly drugging her mom and hooking up with that kid. Distributing. From a Japanese learning perspective though it was the hardest book I’ve read but I still followed it. Lots of new words. It was a fun challenge and I’m glad I did it
