floatinthevoid's reviews
220 reviews

What do I do with my life now.

Started off great, by introducing the ominous enigma of Oliver Haddo, The Magician and all the other relevant characters. I love the part where Maugham explore on beauty and terror. It was good. But the rest is meh.

 This book told the story about a writer named Nowatari Tetsuya who is striving to be a prominent figure in the literature field. He picked up inspirations for his novels from his own love life. The female lead in his novels were based on his wife, Rui. A timid woman with gentle and pliant countenance. One day, while in the middle of writing a book, Rui found out about Tetsuya's affairs with one of his writing student. As a response, Rui turned into a forest.

This book uses multi POVs, where each POV acts as a jigsaw piece to the whole puzzle. Surprisingly, though this book is short, the multi POV format doesn't interfere with the pace as a whole. What this book does really well, to me, is its straightforward delivery of a social commentary about women's subjugation under patriarchal marriage. How the system affects the private sphere, how it prevents a healthy work-life balance, and how it disproportionately harms women-the book lays these topics in such a casual way that intertwine neatly with the story. 

Not only that, Ayase also writes about the mythical beauty of a forest so well. It makes me as a reader wanting to find the meaning of this forest that is the center of the story. All in all, this book makes me so unimaginably angry at men who upholds the patriarchy system and relishes in getting benefits from such an unequal mode of society. Other than my least fav part where the story was told from the cheater POV, I do think that towards the end the sharp tone softened instead of finished it with a bang. The ending is also just a tad bit lukewarm. Nevertheless, this book is an engrossing read that will engage reader with its nicely interwoven magical realism and social commentary. 

 

 An unlucky impulsive read. Repetitive, lacking depth and deeply unfunny. This would do great as a satire, but even satire don't always put punchlines in every sentences. Insta-poetry, indeed. Better stay at Instagram. The author seems like a very happy-go-lucky person though, good for her, honestly.