All the Lovers in the Night

By: Mieko Kawakami

Narrated by: Mirai Booth-Ong

Bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami invites listeners back into her immediately recognizable fictional world with this extraordinary new novel and demonstrates yet again why she is one of today's most uncategorizable, insightful and talented novelists.

Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.

As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko's past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make listeners laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.

©2022 Mieko Kawakami (P)2022 W F Howes

Overall

Sometimes the reader’s voice was too monotonous with both narration and characters. Although the story was boring at times there were also moments that had the most beautiful detailing of subtle moments and intricate feelings.