I can appreciate what this book tried to do, but it just didn't work for me. I looooove the cover and was very intrigued about this, but it never grabbed or kept my attention. I didn't care at all about this character and I can't say I liked her. I didn't dislike her either, I just wasn't at all interested in her. I hated the dynamic of her marriage so much. When the lucid dreams started, I thought I would be more into it, but I just wasn't engaged. I did enjoy that she started to think more about her life as a result of the dreams, but, again, this didn't work for me at all. I was bored every time I picked it up and reading a couple of pages felt like reading 20. Not for me!

Hiromi Kawakami's The Third Love is an exploration of Japanese gender relations. Kawakami uses a dream-like time travel structure to send her contemporary main characters into different eras of Japanese history. Riko is stuck in a long term, unhappy relationship. With the help of another man she experiences life in the Edo period as a courtesan and the.another life earlier in Japanese history. Through these experiences she learns to re-examine her own life. The conceit is interesting but results in a disjointed narrative that fails to engage.

"To be born into this world is a wondrous thing."

Riko has married her childhood sweetheart but her husband's infidelity plagues their relationship. At times, it doesn't seem to bother her, at others, she feels desperate and lonely.

As a child, she befriends her school janitor, a man who later becomes a monk. Years later, she runs into Mr Takaoka again, and rekindles their friendship. Mr Takaoka teaches her something magical: how to live inside her dreams and visit different times in history. In the 17th century, she is a courtesan who falls in love with a client and runs away with him. In the Middle Ages, she is the handmaid to a princess. In each of these times, she learns about both love and loss.

Riko's dreams start leaking into her daily life. It makes her wonder about her roles as a wife and mother, questioning her independence or lack thereof.

This book is beautifully surreal and the writing is as dreamy as Riko's nighttime adventures. I learned a lot about different times in Japan through her dreams. Still, I struggled to connect with her. She frequently accepts her husband's continued cheating, which is something I don't really understand.

What I liked is how she eventually began to question all the aspects of her life, and whether her reality is as important as her dreams, and where she can find love outside of her love for her husband and son.

I will read just about anything Kawakami writes! I was drawn in by the premise of this one, and while this wasn't my favorite of her titles, I appreciated the writing -- always dreamy, wistful, and full of heart -- and will continue to follow her career. Very appreciative for the chance to read The Third Love!

A beautiful journey throughout modern day Japan and back to the times of Edo. I really loved the themes in this book and the concept of the third love. Riko is an exceptional character and very easy to relate to.

It's the first thing I've read by Hiroi Kawakami and I'm really looking forward to Strange Weather in Tokyo.

The truth is that I started reading this book with great enthusiasm because I felt that it touched on very interesting and current topics. It was originally published in 2020 and I think it was already quite a topic to talk about feminism and the role of women in society.

Although I found several interesting things in that aspect, I felt for the other that I could not understand the life of the protagonist, which led me to become exasperated on many occasions. Taking into account what Japanese culture is like, one comes to understand certain actions and thoughts a little more, but at times I really wanted to grab the protagonist, Riko, and slap her a couple of times (with no intention of attacking her, just to wake her up). .

It is interesting how we move between the present and their dreams, dreams where we move to the past and that some of the people we can see there also exist in the present and who remember those dreams perfectly. This was strange, I admit. At first I didn't understand what all this dream stuff was for.

Riko constantly talks about the types of love and how they change over time, about how she sees love and what she does in pursuit of those bonds. I think the healthiest thing to do in these times is to focus on self-love. It will sound cliché, but only there... when we know HOW MUCH we are worth, we can come to understand that perhaps, it is better to be alone than accompanied by people who do not value us.

Thank you Granta Publications for the ARC I read on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a beguiling bit of timeslip romance, which starts a little too early and ends far too late. It contains three interlinked stories, framed around the life of Riko, a shy modern Japanese woman (though not that modern), who identified the love of her life at a very young age, pursued and married him. However, he turns out to be less fulfilling than she expected, and her love is mirrored by others, as she stretches into a long, lonely marriage she reconnects with her school caretaker Mr Takaoka, one of her few friends at school who had something mysterious and an air of a magician about him. On reconnecting she asks him to teach her magic, which eventually starts to happen as she starts, in dreams, to slip into the life of a 17th-century courtesan, and then again as a serving lady to a Princess even further back. Riffing on Buddhist ideas of past lives, but also just simple dream logic, she sees how the past lives reflect on her current one, perhaps giving her more agency until quite a climatic much more recent timeslip in the present.

Riko is a very passive protagonist, and Kawakami uses this as a commentary on the current position of Japanese women. It does not seem to occur to Riko to work at all since she married young, and yet in her dream lives both work extensively (sex work and/or manual cleaning). On the flip side, the book lingers for a long time on what Japanese men are looking for in wives, and certainly Riko's husbands many affairs suggest that they still occupy the prime position in the relationship. There is an aspect of the book that suggests its set about twenty years ago, though near then end when Riko is talking about phone photos it isn't that old. But that is part of her sheltered life between housewife, and esoteric dream traveller (which the book attempts to solve near the end).

The Third Love is an intriguing and swift read, which walks a somewhat unsteady tightrope between a confessional pity diary and a historical textbook. There are often big chunks of text where Kawakami just explains the rules of 17th-century courtesan behaviour, or how houses were set up in the Middle Ages. Digressions into how words have changed meaning somehow feel natural because Riko has always been quite a dispassionate narrator, Nevertheless I was more interested in the narrative than engaged, again potentially due to her dispassionate nature, and her eventual conclusion to make her happier is one she possible should have reached without any time slipping at all.

'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!