阪急電車
Author: 有川 浩
Page count: 269
Natively link
Summary
Japanese
隣に座った女性は、よく行く図書館で見かけるあの人だった…。片道わずか15分のローカル線で起きる小さな奇跡の数々。乗り合わせただけの乗客の人生が少しずつ交差し、やがて希望の物語が紡がれる。恋の始まり、別れの兆し、途中下車―人数分のドラマを乗せた電車はどこまでもは続かない線路を走っていく。ほっこり胸キュンの傑作長篇小説。
English
[DeepL Translation - needs review] The woman sitting next to me was that person I see at the library I often go to… A series of small miracles occur on a local train that takes only 15 minutes one way. The lives of the passengers on the train gradually intersect, and eventually a story of hope is spun. Beginning of love, signs of parting, stopovers - the train, with enough drama for the number of passengers, runs on the track that never ends. A heartwarming masterpiece of a long novel.
Availability
Amazon US
eBook Japan
Amazon JP
BookWalker
Honto
CD Japan
Rakuten
Kinokuniya JP
Personal Opinion
I grabbed this book because 3 people in my circle of family and friends, knowing that I’m learning Japanese, told me that they had just read the French translation and liked it, so I wanted to know what it was about! I’ve read it this past winter, took me around 2 months.
My review: (also posted on Natively)I didn’t really know how to rate this book. I hesitated to give it only a few stars, because I didn’t really like any of the characters (!). But I did enjoy reading the book, so that wouldn’t have been fair. I liked to travel along the Hankyu Railway. The descriptions were so detailed that I could look up a lot of the places online and spent some time looking at satellite images and maps and pictures and the like. I almost feel like I know this area between Osaka and Kobe well now! I learned a lot about the culture and love / family / work relationships. Also as other mentioned, there is a lot of Kansai-dialect used, so if you want to practice that, great practice.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Cons
- I think it’s a bit on the difficult side, for example sometimes the sentences are complex descriptions of the train stations, or the character talk in Kansai dialect. I was thinking of nominating it to the ABC but then I read the guidelines for nominating and due to its “shorter” length it seems to fit the IBC better
