Book No. 2 of 2021
(Still behind on my little book reviews, so will keep this brief.)
This story follows two women who fall in love in college and whose paths keep crossing for years after, as they grapple with their love and their emotional and cultural baggage. It’s striking how much this kind of representation is still sorely missing from the publishing industry—one character is Jewish-Japanese-American, the other Indian-American, both navigating the minefield of being queer and “other” in modern American society—and the book examines how queerness and otherness can affect how women end up making life decisions, and the struggle that goes into the everyday freedom of self that most people take for granted. Hashimoto writes with a level of intimacy, thoughtfulness, and self-awareness that comes through clearly in her writing.
That being said, I did find the writing style to be a little bumpy and distracting; it feels very much like a debut novel where the writer hasn’t fully realized her peak powers. The first third or so of the novel is especially rife with mildly awkward sentence constructions, overly expository dialogue, and obviously deployed omniscient narration. As the story progresses and less exposition/backstory/general explanation is needed the writing gets a lot smoother. I did appreciate how 1) characters who do or say things that I normally can’t stand do so believably enough that it’s not cringey, and 2) one character in particular discovers and expresses her sexuality without labels.
Similar Reads
The narrative style and structure reminded me of Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion.