F—-king amazing! 🥹🫶🏻

my friend wasn’t kidding when he said there’s a really slow start to the book—i felt it. the pacing was disjointed, fragmented, intentionally framed as flitting between someone’s memory. that, of course, threw me off quite a bit. but things get progressively smoother: the introduction of shakespeare’s family, and their conflicts and relationships really hastened the story’s progression.

of course, hamnet. my boy, sweet summer child, so brave this young soul. as you know, from the blurb, he DOES NOT survive. and it happens somewhere in part 1 (>50%? : i can’t remember, his death was valiantly sad).

but part 2 is really where things kick off. no more chapter breaks, you just get a full pie to the face with all the emotional weight and guilt, and spirallings into nothingness after hamnet’s passing. raw, vocal, silent, powerful, are just some of the words that can used to describe the section.

4.9 ✨ because i’m deducting 0.1 from the slow start.

i’m reading this book after i’ve read strange pictures, and i have to say: strange pictures reads slightly better than strange houses.

it may have been a starting-out-author thing, but while the plot and narrative is simple, the rest feels a bit hastily stitched together. the sudden appearances of both sister and mother caught me off guard, but if that was the intention, then that’s a good job i guess!

as with strange pictures, i enjoy uketsu’s use of multimodality. it makes the novel very engaging visually, and it also lowkey gives your eyes some break time from the words and plot twists!

3.9 ✨

i ABSOLUTELY do not like ambiguous endings, especially when it comes to horror-ish stories. mainly because the lack of closure isn’t always portrayed as clearly/vividly as a movie could.

with that said, i did enjoy this novella by yoko ogawa. you get three stories with three unsettling narratives: young girlypop having this weird voyeuristic desire of her foster diver brother; young woman who’s feeding (supposedly) unhealthy food to her pregnant sister; and a separated wife who recommended this shady dormitory to her cousin for some reason.

great writing. good example of word economy, but i guess this may have been too frugal for my liking.

closer to 3.9 ✨!