ENTERTAINMENT REALM

The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. Europa| June 4, 2019| 240 pages | $17.00| ISBN: 978-160-945-532-3

RATING: ****/5*

“I loved the idea of falling in love with someone, but the actual being in love part was difficult. I was all too familiar with my own desires. And I was very straightforward about asking myself what it was that I really wanted.”

Hiromi Kawakami gorgeously writes about love in a dark, amusing, charming and weird way that I find impeccable and engrossing. As the title suggests, ten women recount their relationships with a man named Nishino. The novel delves into the absurdities of any love relationship. Nishino is an enigmatic man that never married or had children. He’s had a strong effect on many intelligent, accomplished, fascinating women. One lover describes his physical appearance: “Thick hair. An angular but not too prominent chin. Deep dark eyes. A mouth always turned up at the corners.” We learn a bit more about Nishino yet never really know him completely.

Although married at the time, Parfait fell in love with Nishino who is 12 years older than her: “When I think of Nishino’s embrace, I am struck with a fleeting wistfulness, but I cannot recall in which way I had been in love with him.” Another woman fell in love with him when they were in school together: “I would always remember clearly what happened in the grass between our fourteen-year-old selves, in the elusive space between adulthood and childhood.” When she was working as his superior at a company, Manami had a relationship with the Nishino: “We were anxious. We were light. We had been rapturously happy. We had been in despair. We had been on the verge of loving one another. But, incapable of doing so, we found ourselves on the precipice, doomed to remain there forever.” One woman met Nishino at the Energy-Saving Cooking Club: “I was surprised that men like Nishino existed in the world, the type of man who could slip so smoothly into a woman’s sensibility. I was surprised by the way, before even being aware of it, I was trying to act out the rule of the “alluring older woman.” I was surpsied by how easily emotions such as jealousy or possessiveness could be aroused with regard to a person for who I harbored not even the slightest feelings.”

I really liked Kawakami’s previous novel The Nakamo Thrift Shop and now after reading The Ten Loves of Nishino I know I’m a fan.

–review by Amy Steele

I received this book for review from Europa.