'The real world consists of separate fragments, so many it's almost impossible to get an overall view, yet we are able to create our stories by stringing a few of those fragments together, in some kind of order.'

I am a massive fan of Hiromi Kawakami, so came to this with high expectations, and mostly they were met. It feels slightly different in tone from the other books that I have read, this is slightly more melancholic, sometimes a bit bleak.

This is the story of Riko, stuck in a marriage with her childhood sweetheart Naa-chan, who is unfaithful and doesn't really contribute his share of their life together. Riko befriends the caretaker of the school that she attended, Mr Takaoka, and through him learns to escape her mediocre life in the world of dreams. Asleep, she inhabits other worlds and other people, becoming a courtesan or a princess's handmaiden, and soon her dreamworld is more real to her than her actual life. As she continues to meet Mt Takaoka to discuss their dreams their other lives start to interact, and the lines between waking and dreaming, between who they used to be and who they are, become blurred.

There is a lot here about the role of women in society, about marriage across the centuries, and to be honest Riko is a bit of a wet sponge. She accepts her husband's transgressions almost with a shrug of the shoulders, and in her dreams inhabits women who are frankly treated even worse. I can see why some reviewers got a little fed up with the book, and without some knowledge of Japanese ancient tales this could be a bit of a slog.

But, for me, this was a well crafted, subtle work of fiction that will reward with re-reading to tease out the complexities of the examination of who we are now and who we have been. Are we really fragments of a collected past? Why is it that we can immediately connect with someone we have never met before? It is a story of love and longing, a tale as old as time.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

This interesting, quiet novel is a study of the dynamics of love, marriage and fidelity in the different eras of Japanese history. Riko is a modern day Japanese woman, struggling to balance her love for her husband and child, with the frustration of his numerous affairs. She finds solace in a childhood friend who teaches her the way to dream herself into different lives. In this way, she lives first as an oiran, a courtesan in the 18th century and then as a lady in waiting in the Heian period, between the 1st and 2nd centuries. Although fairly repetitive at times, I enjoyed the ebb and flow of characters in the different time periods and found the insight into women's lives past and present, fascinating. Although not one is my favourite books by this author, still a very enjoyable read.

Thank you #Netgalley for this ARC

Historical fiction meets magical realism with the pacing, self reflection and insights of a modern japanese novel.
I loved this book - it was my first one from Kawagama Hiromi and will not be the last one.
It touches on hard themes, and some people will be disturbed by the calm and aura of "normality" that it's given to them but to me it was an incredibly beautiful introspection on love, on who we are and how we change.
The dreams of Riko (are they really just dreams? ) allow her to explore and reframe her own reality. Riko changes as a person because of her experiences in other times and bodies, but these times and bodies are influenced just as well by the fact that the modern day Riko is experiencing them.
If I close my eyes I see all all of them - Riko, Naa-chan and Takaoka, bound by a read thread that stretches across time, allowing them to find each other, but never forcing them to do so.

Having really enjoyed the quirky 'The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino' and 'Strnage Weather in Tokyo' I was looking forward to this new one from Kawakami. It's as quirky as 'Ten Loves' and follows a similar pattern of exploring issues of love and marriage in modern Japan but as this is novel based it has a stronger sense of coherence. Saying that, I'm not sure I enjoyed it more. Riko's story is told through her experiences of her marriage to Naa-chan and her friendship with Mr Takaoka and her dream worlds from the past where Kawakami explores the ways that women's interactions with each other and male partners shifts over 1000 years of Japanese life.
Using a kind of Japanese magic realism that we've seen in a lot of Japanese fiction, Kawakami builds a vivid life-like dream world that helps Riko make sense of her marriage to Naa-chan, a persistently philandering salary man.
The dream sequences take us into vivid portrayals of previous eras of Japanese literary and social history and these are suprememly explored. Tightly researched and authenticaly described, these parts of the novel I loved. The modern woven in story was much harder to connect to. Riko seems too complacent about her husband's flings, even if this is explained away by culture and modernity, and her relationships with men who were adults in her childhood are also uncomfortable to contemplate.
The descriptions are sumptious and it's quite wonderful to sink into one of these sections where you are in a new world from the Japanese past.
A book of more than two halves and likely has something for everyone who loves Japanese literature.
So quite difficult to 'rate' - 4 stars for the HF pieces and 3 for the modern, contemporary pieces.

Written in a dreamlike way, this book is about Riko, a young woman narrating her life and loves. From a young age(an actual toddler! )she considers herself in love with Naachan and when she grows up she marries him, knowing he’s had other relationships with women and he continues to have affairs after their marriage. An important man in Riko’s life from childhood is Mr Takada, her schools janitor, that she spent a lot of time talking to. When they meet up again after her marriage he talks about magic and then she starts dreaming. The dreams take her to historical periods in Japan’s history, firstly two hundred years ago in Edo and the second around 1000 in the Heian period. In both cases the dreams lives have the feeling of real lives. Exploring the lives of women, (especially in regards to love and sex), in these other time periods allows Riko to find her own independence in the modern world.
It’s a bit of a slow read and at times repetitive, as Riko goes over her thoughts but I enjoyed the dreamy flavour of the story. There’s many links to classic Japanese literature (eg. The Tales of Ise) that I’m not really familiar with. An interesting read. (I also really love the cover!)

This was my first Kawakami book. The concept was interesting but I struggled a bit to really submerge myself into this narrative and I didn't really understand Riko's lack of a reaction or should I say her passiveness to what happened to her throughout the plot.

Normally I find Japanese literature relaxingly written and peaceful. This was just dull and repetitive. I didn't care about Riko or any of the characters from the Edo or Heian periods. Nothing seemed to happen and there was a lot of pondering of the same things over and over.
I thought I'd really enjoy this but somehow for me it didn't work at all.

I still can’t put into words exactly how this book made me feel. It was a raw-kind-of-read, in a good way and painfully honest. Married to her Childhood sweetheart, Riko embarks on a life she was not prepared for. In love with Na-chaan since she was a child, when she becomes older she is relieved his feelings for her are reciprocated. The love that she has for Na-chaan, however, does feel like an all-consuming love. Riko has dreamed since a young age that she would become the one he loves the most, that she would be everything to Na-chaan in the same way. However, the love they have for each other, we learn, is very different. Their love is not all that straight forward and as the story develops we learn that between his work and his other connections, Na-chaan is well known for being desired by other women, and a whole host of things happen for poor Riko. As elements of their marriage begin to sour, despite her unwavering love for Na-chaan, Riko craves for an escape and a hope that her marriage can somehow be saved. She reconnects with her high school Janitor who was her only friend growing up one afternoon out of the blue. This rejuvenates Riko, feeling that intellectually, to an extent he the only person who understands her. He tells her about how he lives different lives, and she jumps at the opportunity to experience different lives in her dreams which are in fact very real. They continue to meet up away from the dream world at several different points during the story.

I found the lucid dreaming aspect of the story intriguing. The book is split into these three parts - A Tale from long ago, a tale from long long ago and a tale from today where she exists as herself. Finding an escape from her daily life she sinks into another life in her sleep - in 17th century Japan she is a high-ranking courtesan, and in the Middle Ages she is a serving lady to a Princess. She experiences both heart break and love in her dream life and her real life. She learns, also about the many different types of love that exist. She also meets Mr Takaoka in her dreamscape, where they themselves experience a different form of love together.


The best way to describe these timelines in the book are them being ‘echos’ of eachother.

There is a lot of nuance in this book. It looks at gender roles, misogyny, age-gap relationships, and different models of love between time jumps. Parts of it were unsettling at times which I think was to be expected from the Historic spin of a whole host of Japanese literature references that exist within the book (a lot of reviews talk about Takaoka (the janitor) being problematic but I personally didn’t think he was, but then again this was a book that felt the MOST traditionally Japanese in the way of literature in my opinion. For some readers who haven’t read much Japanese literature or history it explains the disconnect in some of the reviews - this was a really intellectually interesting book overall)

Thank you again Netgalley for this early access, I throughly enjoyed this book and will be looking out for more Hiromi Kawakami books in the future.

With lyrical prose and vivid imagery, this book takes readers on a thought-provoking and emotionally resonant journey through time and the human heart.

Hiromi Kawakami’s ambitious take on the time slip novel centres on an exploration of ideas of love between men and women in Japan through the ages. Kawakami draws on historical characters from the classic Tales of Ise notably Narahiri Arawara, rewriting their stories to fit her central character Riko’s personal dilemmas. Now in her forties, Riko married her childhood sweetheart Naa-chan, ten years her senior. Riko’s is an isolated figure, bullied at school, her closest bond was with her elementary school janitor Takaoka, a failed Buddhist monk. Riko’s adult years have been overshadowed by her obsession with Naa-chan, her days taken up with housework while he pursues a series of other women. Years pass, Riko’s increasingly adrift, uncertain about her choices, her feelings for Naa-chan and her hopes for the future. Then a chance encounter with the mysterious Takaoka sets off a series of disturbingly-lucid dreams in which Riko becomes one with women from the past.

In Riko’s early dreams she’s able to observe a family living in the 1700s during the Edo period; eventually inhabiting this world through their daughter who’s sold to an establishment in the famous Yoshiwara pleasure district. There the girl’s trained as a woman of pleasure, her sole purpose to fulfil men’s sexual desires. In this past reality the girl, who is both Riko and not Riko, takes on a version of Takaoka as a client, then falls for him. The girl’s experiences lead Riko to question her own existence and contemplate the possibility of sex without love or emotional ties. Now a mother, her dreamscape then shifts further back in time taking Riko to the Heian period, where she is connected to a nyōbō lady-in-waiting to a young princess. The princess then becomes the wife of famous poet Narihara, so that books Riko’s read in the present start to unfold before her eyes. In this time period Riko’s struck by concepts of marriage as primarily political and contractual, an arrangement in which both men and women are free to take lovers. A situation that causes Riko to reflect on contemporary notions of monogamy and fidelity. A process aided by ongoing conversations with Takaoka - who also plays a part within her Heian fantasy.

Kawakami’s narrative’s partly inspired by her own experiences in Japan, the gender roles and expectations that shaped or hindered her ability to achieve independence. She’s particularly fascinated by the way ideas about the nature of love are inflected by historical, cultural frameworks. Kawakami discards any sense of linear progression, instead she wants to explore the ways in which models of love between men and women in different time periods might open up, or close down, different possibilities for women. It’s an intriguing idea, although I didn’t find the execution completely convincing, or entirely coherent. The episodes featuring different eras in Japanese history are meticulously researched and well-observed but Riko herself was quite a frustrating character. Her initial passivity in her dealings with her husband Naa-chan sometimes strained my credibility; and I found her dealings with Takaoka – part fatherly mentor, part companion, party lover – more than slightly unsettling. The contemporary aspects of the narrative were the weakest, perhaps because of the repetition of ideas – presumably linked to the book’s original appearance in serial form. Translated by Ted Goosen.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Granta Publications for an ARC

I went into this book completely blind and I am so glad I did. I have truly not read a book like this before and I intend to pick up more of Kawakami’s books.

This is an enchanting, beautiful book about unfulfilled/ unrequited love. It follows Riko’s life from childhood, to her marriage to a man who Riko clearly loves more than he loves her. During her childhood, she also meets the school janitor, Mr Takaoka, who reappears in her life later on at a particularly difficult point in her marriage. Mr Takaoka teaches her the magic of living alternative lives within a dreamworld.

The book is split into three parts: one part in the Edo period, the second part in the Heian period and the last part in the modern world. In the first two parts, Riko is transported within her dreams into the traditional lives of women living in those periods. The first part was definitely better than the second for me (which is where the book fell slightly short for me which is why I have put this as four stars). The third and last part is about Riko’s life in the modern world.

The writing is so clever. It shows the complexities of love (unfulfilled love in particular) in Riko’s life and in her dreams living the lives of the women in the past. Kawakami beautifully interweaves historical periods in Japan with Riko’s life in the modern world. I found Riko quite naive at first, particularly how she seemed to approach her husband’s infidelities but she grew more on me as the book progressed - it is truly a journey of growth and self-discovery for her. I also learnt a lot about Japanese culture and society which I am trying to learn more of as I hope to visit soon. There are also strong elements of Japanese magical realism which I really enjoyed and I thought it was done very well.

Overall, highly recommend!

Thank you to Netgalley and Granta Publications for this ARC!

A literary labyrinth that raises more questions than it answers.

Kawakami returns in a new translation of her 2020 novel, a revelatory and shimmering mosaic of coming-of-age, historical and fantasy fiction, that never reveals all of its secrets, even to the bitter end.

As the title suggests, this is about love, but not in the ways that you might expect. Set in an abstracted Tokyo, Riko finds herself in a staid marriage with her childhood sweetheart, a charismatic and older man who loves her but still strays. Then comes a blast from her past when she bumps into the former janitor at her elementary school, a man who never seems to age and always appears just when she needs him to.

So begins a book that is actually uncategorisable, being equally a very contemporary novel about modern love; a magical realist exploration of love and reincarnation; and a timeslip fantasy of old Japan. With no indication of which version of the novel you're reading at any given moment, it takes strict concentration to know which Riko you are following throughout the book, and the specifics of Japanese life—and Japanese multi-generational life at that—means that it is, at every turn, unfamiliar and new, tinged with both ennui and dread in equal doses.

This is not an easy book by any stretch of the imagination. With little humour, it trips along with a dash of cold water in the face of rosy romantic love, with everyone suffering in the name of love, but finding ways past the obstacles to a place of equilibrium and acceptance.

Four stars for its metatextual intelligence.

I love going into books knowing nothing - which is exactly what I did with The Third Love. All I needed to know was that Hiromi Kawakami wrote it.
The book starts of with a traditional narrative of a woman's life from girlhood until her 30s and then takes a turn that carries her into dream worlds set in historical Japan that communicates with her waking life.
What I loved about The Third Love was that you can read it solely for the vibes or you could spend hours thinking about it and analysing it, which is the best kind of story for me!
I had such a great time with this, I've never read anything quite like it before. It's thought provoking, atmospherical, and a little bit magical, I loved it!

In my review o Kawakami’s ニシノユキヒコの恋と冒険 (UK: The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino; US: The Ten Loves of Nishino), I started by saying Love can be difficult. Person A loves Person B but the love is not entirely (or even at all) reciprocated. Even when they do love one another, problems can occur. Things change, life happens. However, when it does not work out, there is a lingering memory of a past love, a memory that can last for a lifetime. This is what this book is about. It is also what this book is about.

Our heroine/narrator is Riko. She falls in love at an early age, specifically when she is two. He is Naruya Harada, known as Naa-chan You may wonder what a child that young can know of love. And you’d be right to wonder. I myself had no idea why I loved him so. Though younger than her father, he had been a friend of her father – same school, same university, same football team – and was a regular visitor to the house. Riko was an only child and had had a happy childhood. When she went to kindergarten, she was not happy. She made no friends, found the other children too boisterous and hated the school lunches. The only friend she made was Mr Takaoka, the caretaker. She got on well with him. He was still quite young and had trained as Buddhist monk but given up. The other children despised him.

When she is older Naa-chan moves away to Kyushu (she and her family live in Tokyo). She learns that he has a girlfriend as they have been writing to each other. She is twenty-four when he finally returned to Tokyo and he is surprised to find not the girl he knew but an attractive woman. One thing leads to another and soon they are engaged and then married. They live with her parents. However she soon learns that he has not made a clean break with the woman from Kyushu.

Riko is learning the koto with Michiko-sensei and it is she who suggests they should get a place of their own but Riko says that both her parents like having Naa-chan around.

Then she suspects there is yet another woman. He wasn’t the type who jumped into bed with whomever happened to be around, that’s for sure. Yet, as I said before, his nature made it impossible for him to reject a woman with whom he had shared a heartfelt conversation.. Then she finds out that he is even seeing Michiko-sensei. It gets worse when he has a fling with the fiancée of his company’s vice-president. When that ended he was devastated and, when she found out, so was she. Naa-chan no longer cared for me, first of all. Beyond that, though, an even deeper sadness that I had lost all desire to look after him, even though I had once been happy to place my heart at his feet.

At this time Mr Takaoka, the former school caretaker, reappeared in her life. He had been travelling round the country, living rough. Mr Takaoka helps her and tells her that she can learn magic to help her.

She now lives her ordinary life but also lives a life in her dreams. In her dreams she is living many years ago. She came from a big family and one source of income for such families is to sell their daughters to teahouses in Tokyo. She becomes what we woulc call a geisha but Kawakami does not use the word, rather having a series of expressions depending on the geisha’s status. It is not a particularly easy life – step out of line and the punishment is brutal – but she seems to like it and is soon immersed in it. She discovers a lot more about sex, for example. All the time she is discussing what is going on with Mr Takaoka. Eventually she meets a former samurai, Mr Takada. He seems to be a bit like Mr Takaoka and it is clear that the boundaries between her real life and her dream life are very fluid. One of the strict rules is that the women must not fall in love with a man as, of course, they must be available for many men and get as much money out of them as possible. We see what happens when one woman does fall in love with her client and pays a very heavy price. Riko’s alter ego – she is called Shungetsu – falls for Mr Takada and they plan to elope. En route we learn who Mr Takada really is. He is Prince Takaoka, a historical character, who was also the hero of a book I recently reviewed.

Back in the real world she is still with Naa-chan but things are not entirely happy. I am still in love with Takada. I wish I had spent my life with him. Fled with him to the ends of the earth. and I didn’t doubt that our marriage would bring happiness. Now, fiinally, I have to accept that the knight on the white charger is just a human being, and that I am not the princess who lives happily ever after.

Things get more complicated when, at least in her dream world, when she moves much further back in time and, initially, she is the ten year old maid in waiting to a princess. We follow both her life and the life of her princess. At least some of the characters are clearly historical. Takada/Takaoka also appears in another guise. In short we have Riko with two past lives meeting Mr Takaoka regularly in real life but also in both her dream lives.

All of this takes place against what is happening in her real life – her not always smooth relationship with her husband, the birth of her son Toji and, later, her decision to get a job. At the same time she discourses on the many complications of love. She considers the situation in the present and also in the past and compares the three variations and not only as regards love but also the role of women in the different eras and relationship between the sexes. Heian aristocrats followed a single path. Today, however, a hundred married couples will follow a hundred different paths. Freedom is great, no doubt about it. But it brings its own complications.

Love is complicated. I think we all know that. Of course it is more complicated for Riko as she has a love life both in the present and the past – two pasts, in fact. Two of the men who have vast love lives – her husband and Ariwara no Narihira, the husband of the princess in her second past dream life, have many lovers but it does not seem to make them happy, far from it, in fact. In short, at least in Kawakami’s view, there is no easy answer, whether in the present or the past, no straightforward route to the ideal love life.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Granta for a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

The Third Love follows Riko, a young woman trapped in a marriage to her childhood sweetheart. Like with many relationships, what started out as a romance for the ages quickly soured into a life of lies and cheating. Riko knows that her husband is cheating on her with numerous different women over a long period of time, however she wants to hold onto the original feelings she’d felt when the relationship blossomed. She meets an old friend, Mr Takaoka, a man who holds a power to live within his dreams. After being taught to use this baffling skill, Riko’s story begins to blossom away from her husband and into a past world.

How to view this story when there isn’t too much of a story at all? You’d think that the premise is an easy lay up for some truly wondrous escapades, but it rarely ever reaches a point of enjoyment that will grip. Kawakami has found an idea for a story, but her execution of said idea seems to be based around a retelling of historical facts; a way to inform the reader of how life in various eras of Japan played out for women of those times. Is there anything wrong with giving a factual retelling of these periods? Of course not. Historical fiction finds numerous ways to make the placing of a character in a specific period feel interesting and attention grabbing.

The issue with this book, however, is in the way the story is told. It feels overly stretched for what is a back and forth romance, with very little progression being felt in the main character. Despite such abilities to enhance the character being opened up, the opportunity to give Riko any growth is stalled by a constant need to remind the reader of Riko’s relationship and general life problems. We know that Riko is struggling; reminding us of this fact on every few pages begins to feel like the author doesn’t have much to speak about and is just ramming the same repetitive information down the reader’s throat. Cutting this story by at least 70 pages could see a tighter and more rewarding experience being had by all.

A quietness that comes with many Japanese stories can be found here, but those stories usually have a significant pulling power in other areas away from action and excitement. They’re surreal. The characters change dramatically. The environments become the main attraction. This isn’t the case with The Third Love. The simplistic language is where the story fails in it’s final need to pull in the reader. If your story is whispering, at least write with a difference and a desire beyond the need to fill the page.

There just wasn’t enough in the books to warrant it’s length. An impact would have been left if some heavy editing had taken place to cut it down to a suitable length.

2.5 stars

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Granta publishing for the free digital ARC of Hiromi Kawakami's novel 'The Third Love'.

I've really enjoyed Kawakami's previous novels but unfortunately 'The Third Love' didn't quite click with me.

The novel centres around Riko, a woman in her 30s, who married her much older childhood crush.
Their marriage doesn't match the idea of love she had before she married him. Her husband is selfish and unfaithful, and his infidelity causes her to go through an emotional turmoil.
She reconnects with a friend from her past, Mr. Takaoka, who she goes to for comfort and companionship.
He teaches her how to live inside her dreams which offers her a lot of insight in to her own life.
These dream experiences take her to the 17th century Japan where she takes on the role of a prostitute in Tokyo, and then to the Middle ages where she works as a servant for a Japanese princess.

Even though the author makes it clear that Riko is dreaming, the writing style and structure make the historical parts of the novel feel like time-travel.
Riko's character is very passive. She has horrible things happen to her in her dreams and in real life, but she never seems to be bothered by it all.
The writing was a bit too slow for my taste and the dream sequences became a bit confusing at times.
I really enjoyed reading about the history of women in Japan and their place in society, but that wasn't enough to keep me truly enganged.
It was a captivating tale but it sadly fell flat for me.

My favourite author hasn’t let me down yet again! I could not put this down! It is written so beautifully and is so immersive that I finished it with two days, when i reluctantly had to put it down to work I picked it back up at the first opportunity. Another treasure to add to my collection by Hiromi Kawakami.

Having read and really enjoyed Strange Weather in Tokyo, I was quite looking forward to reading another books by Kawakami, but sadly I didn’t quite enjoy this one as much as the other one I’ve read. Saying that, I will go back and try a few of her other earlier novels.

I generally enjoy Kawasaki, there’s a beautiful simplicity to it and her explorations of relationship dynamics are, to me, very interesting. This one didn’t fail to deliveries on that front for me.

However I did find some of the character development, or maybe lack there of, let this books down. I thought the time split device in this book would highlight the differences and changes in women’s lives and expectations in Japanese society but it didn’t quite do it as I expected.

Nevertheless I think it’s a worth while read for fans of magic realism and for those who like a slightly slower deep dive into marital relationships as well as familial ones.

2.5 stars rounded up. Thank you to NetGalley and Granta for the ARC.
I have read a couple of other books by Kawakami and really enjoyed them but unfortunately I found this to be such a disappointment. The story centres around Riko who has married her childhood sweetheart and now finds herself in a marriage where she seems to exist purely for the comfort and satisfaction of her selfish and unfaithful husband. The narrative then shifts into a dreamwalking/time-travel tale where Riko is able to experience life as a 17th Century courtesan and as a servant to a Princess in the Middle Ages.
The premise of the story was really interesting, and Kawakami is able to evoke historical Japan beautifully BUT I really struggled with a narrative that seems to romanticise an old-fashioned, submissive role for women and to fetishise the idea of love so that the main character seems to put up with anything from any man if she thinks she is experiencing love in some form. The time-travel strands, which promised so much, just fizzled out in an extremely unsatisfying way, as if the author had lost interest in them and there were some quite problematic scenes (including non-consensual sex which the author chooses to eroticise) which I hope will be accompanied by trigger warnings in the final published version.
It may be that I am missing something, reading the book as I am through a modern, white, Western lens, but this book really was not for me.

I'm a big fan of Kawakami's writing so I was excited for this one. I liked the thematic work but I don't think the writing was as solid.