The Ten Loves of Nishino

The Ten Loves of Nishino / Hiromi Kawakami
trans. from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell
NY: Europa, 2019, c2003.
172 p.

After reading The Nakano Thrift Shop, I wanted to explore more work by Hiromi Kawakami. This ebook was available through my library, so off I went on the journey of understanding Mr. Nishino through the eyes of ten women in his life. 

Each chapter reveals another side of Nishino, from his youth to the end of his life, all as related by a woman (or two) who was in some kind of romantic or sexual relationship with him. Some of the women were independent and brushed him off, and some he dumped when he found his next love. He seemed to be attracted to women old and young (sometimes creepily so) and to be seeking a sense of his own self in the women he partnered up with. A few times in the book he moans about his inability to commit or be faithful, and this temperament definitely defines him over the course of this book. 

Although I found some of this interesting, mainly the different kinds of women speaking and their varied approaches to Nishino's character, I started to get tired of him early on. For all the focus on him and his vague, slippery, indefinable appeal, he just didn't seem interesting enough for all this talk about him. Also I found there was a lot of "and then we had sex" in the stories which sometimes seemed to come out of nowhere, and with someone who wasn't the current girlfriend. As he gets older, and starts approaching younger and younger women, I also got a bit creeped out by him. In the first story, he says to the young daughter of his love that it was too bad he never got to date her too. Ugh. 

I think that there is something I'm missing here. Perhaps the aesthetic is just not mine but I didn't fully engage with this one. I really liked some of the women, in particular Eriko, who chose her cat over Nishino (relatable). But there were too many moments that I found distasteful or just tedious for me to love this. I'll have to try again and see if one of her other books appeals to me more.