So I suppose… the 聞きちがえ I was wondering about in last week’s reading was just a different interpretation of what was said rather than actually hearing something else?
The end took a rather unexpected turn for me, and I’m not quite sure I’m quite there with the ending. The metaphor with the 天の川, and what it seemed like to 島村 throughout this last part… I don’t get it.
I might just need to let it sit for a bit, or re read, but right now I’m just confused.
Right! That ending is just so…sudden? Unsettling? I don’t know how to feel about it…or the whole thing in general, really. Haha. I really can’t decide if I even like or dislike this book. It has left such a sense of hollow confusion in me. (I hope I’m being vague enough to not need to spoiler tag anything…)
Finished the book yesterday!
I learned about 雪晒し this week. I also learned there’s a lot of things written in 昔の本.
I actually don‘t dislike 島村. I also don’t dislike 駒子, although she has been kind of exhausting throughout the whole book
I found this week easier to understand (it just felt clearer, story-wise) than previous weeks. The 天の河 must have been really pretty, and I can empathize with his feeling of being sucked into the starry sky. (I‘m not gonna try and interpret it)
There’s still a lot of things I don‘t quite understand, but I’m not really up for a re-read, so the もやもや will probably stay that way.
There wasn’t really a clear conclusion or anything, but I still liked the ending (although I agree that it was quite sudden). I suppose the story wasn’t really about showing dramatic turns of the protagonists‘ lives, but just day-to-day interactions, and of course there’s also a lot happening between people (人間関係 wise) on a small scale. Even if these relationships only influence their lives for a small period of time. And when that period ends, everything goes on as usual. (I don’t mean to say there weren’t long-lasting events happening in the story, but it still feels like the story only showed a small part of their lives without aiming to tell anything beyond that)
I’m still glad I finished the book. Now I can say that I read 雪国 in the original, and it’s written by a Nobel prize winner nonetheless!
