Alex the Book Reviewer

  As with all the books I've read by Kazuo Ishiguro, this is a slightly odd dystopian futuristic story written in a way where he never really explains that it is a slightly odd dystopian futuristic story, he just tells it as if we are all aware and living in this reality.  Do you know what I mean? He doesn't start with the line, "and in these slightly weird dystopian times where robots are the norm and we harvest clones for their body parts" like some weird writers. He's just straight in there with Klara telling her story like we would all expect Klara to be a robot companion in a shop and we've all seen that on the high street 1000 times. Anyway, Klara is a robot companion for sale in a shop. But she's a little bit different, able to observe things in a different way. She's not a little bit human or anything, just more contemplative than the other robots. She's an older model, been in the shop for a while, but she's eventually chosen b...

    I read this book on recommendation by several people as I wanted to expand the geography of my reading. It's set in Japan, I've actually read a few set in Japan now (Convenience Store Woman - which I've just realised I never reviewed, such a shame because it was a really odd book!, The Key to Midnight - this one really doesn't count!), but it's a culture I'm fascinated by. I really hope to go there sometime. However, the most you really learn about the culture of Japan is that The Beatles really were big all over. The title of the book is (probably obvious to most people but sadly not to the musical ignoramus that is me!) a reference to The Beatles’ song of the same name. It's the favourite song of one of the main characters. It's really about people. Dysfunctional, messed up people. It's written from the point of view of Toru Watanabe, a university student in 1960's Tokyo, and is about his relationships with five different people who ...

this book has no capital letters at the beginning of paragraphs it also has no full stops or speech marks it's insanely annoying! Punctuation exists for a reason Mrs!!!  good grief. I started it one evening and could absolutely not follow it at all. However, I persevered the next day and actually got into it. In fact, I really struggled to put it down. I could honestly have read this book forever. Each chapter is the story of one woman. Which, at first, I thought was going to be really annoying, largely because I adored the first character and wanted to carry on hearing her tale. I thought it was going to be a bunch of short stories, only vaguely linked, which I suppose it is in some ways, but it works really well, mainly I think because you are instantly engaged in each woman's story. She writes so well that there's none of that getting-used-to-the-character settling-in period. Chapter one - 1) Amma, 2) Yazz, 3) Dominique. Amma is a strong, black, feminist,...