Join the Intermediate Book Club here!
人質の朗読会 Home Thread
Week 11
Start Date: Jul 04
Previous Part: Week 10
Next Part: Week 12
Reading:
| Week |
Start Date |
Chapter |
End Page |
Page Count |
| Week 11 |
Jul 04 |
6th Night [until 青年と出会った時の私だった] |
159 |
14 |
Discussion Rules
- Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
- When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
- Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
- To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!
Participants
Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.
(Please feel free to update your status whenever you like!)
- I’m reading along
- I have finished this part
- I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
- I am no longer reading the book
Very interested to see where this one goes, but it felt like the most complete ‘first half` we’ve had so far. We learn so much about the main character and how she ended up the way she did, while I feel like most nights’ first halves have left me with a haze of questions so far. I really enjoyed the last paragraphs about everyone leaving her and how she feels close to her husband by leaving no trace of herself in the present.
My experience so far is that it is very difficult to predict where these stories are going to go! However, if I were to hazard a guess I kind of imagine that the main character will find in this random encounter some way to reconnect with life. We certainly get a hint that the person who the narrator was at the time of meeting the spear-throwing boy is different from the person they are at the time of telling the story. I was surprised by the quite depressive turn that the story took just before our finishing point. (There is an interesting narrative structure here, that I think appears in other Ogawa stories. A surprising or unusual event is described, then the author goes back in time to describe something in the narrator’s past that explains who they are/why they behave in such and such a way. One example is the very first (and very striking) story in 寡黙なしがみだらな弔い, which features a seemingly banal episode with a woman seeking out a strawberry shortcake in a bakery, but then jumps back to describe a traumatic event in her past that explains why she wishes to buy this particular cake .
.