some readers have commented abt how this short novel kept them up, and I am among them - others have complained that the shift in narrative perspective in the last 1/3 of the story irritated or disappointed them.

For me it was more puzzling than irritating, but it did feel trivializing in a way / but maybe that's part of the puzzle?

that we can most easily idealize the heroism of war by trivializing the trials of the prosaic contemporary? that in contrast to the commonplace can we best idealize the past ?

i would like to read a review or two by someone who had read this in the original Japanese edition - I'd like also to know if the author did his own translation to the English ? therein I think lays some of the rub of this, of the feeling that the three thirds don't make up a satisfying whole ?