Despite a promising theme (a strange virus spreading) and a lot of connections with Japan, this collection of short stories felt roughly cobbled together. There were some good ideas here that probably should have stayed as short stories. The “connections” between stories really stood out as overly obvious and felt like they had been added in after the fact to try to make things more cohesive.
So, I didn’t like this book.
I really enjoyed Cloud Atlas, which is similar in scope (and intent?) and written with skill and subtlety compared to this effort. While that book gave hope, this book is full of bleak scenes of death and hopelessness, loneliness and dysfunctional families and relationships. I’m guessing the writer was working out some issues from the recent pandemic. Therapeutic for him, not entertaining for me.
Also, many of the characters in this book are Americans from a Japanese background, or Japanese people living in Japan and there were a lot of racial issues that are sort of tangentially addressed. The Japanese people living in Japan didn’t follow Japanese cultural norms, and almost all the characters felt shallow and not fleshed out. The Japan in this book was just a collection of pop culture references that didn’t ring true to me.
Therefore, I think I’ll have to move on to something a little different. Next I’m reading The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian.
