I gave this book a 5 star review on but I’m still not sure how I feel about it. 

On its surface this is a story of a friendship forged in trauma and the perils that arise from that. The story is narrated by a young boy who is brutally bullied by his classmates and follows his developing friendship with Kojima, a girl in his class who is also constantly bullied. There are very brutal and graphic scenes of children inflicting violence on other children that were sometimes hard to read, so definitely proceed with caution and check the trigger warnings. I don’t think those were the primary takeaway of the book however. Kawakami uses these scenes to explore different moral ideologies on the meaning of life and how those can be used to address trauma. The book explores the meaning of human relationships, familial love, power dynamics, ableism, and classism. 

The book is beautifully written and very hard to put down. It’s also so, so heartbreaking. Kawakami has such a gift for creating these characters that are so realistic and heartbreaking that by the end of the novel you just want to give them a hug. I know I will be thinking about these characters for a while. I hope they are ok.