Michael
Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a dystopian novel that spans hundreds of thousands of years. I consider this a gentle dystopia in that there are no wars, plagues, or environmental disasters in the novel itself. There is no real violence. It is about the characters.
It is written in a spare but beautiful style that leaves you thinking about what happened in the novel, and what will happen to humanity in the future. It explores themes of humanness, love, and relationships, and it is heartbreaking, moving, and haunting. However, you must be willing to live with a little ambiguity as you don’t really understand everything until the very end.
Written in a short story/vignette style these individual “chapters” all connect, not just with the previous story, but with all the previous stories, even though they take place in different time periods. I liked how some of my favorite characters reappeared (sort-of) in subsequent stories. I don’t know how Kawakami pulled this off, because I usually find this kind of thing annoying and hard to follow.
The ending shows that humanity is becoming extinct and there is something comforting in its inevitability.
I know that I will be thinking about this for a very long time and I am so glad I read it.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a dystopian novel that spans hundreds of thousands of years. I consider this a gentle dystopia in that there are no wars, plagues, or environmental disasters in the novel itself. There is no real violence. It is about the characters.
It is written in a spare but beautiful style that leaves you thinking about what happened in the novel, and what will happen to humanity in the future. It explores themes of humanness, love, and relationships, and it is heartbreaking, moving, and haunting. However, you must be willing to live with a little ambiguity as you don’t really understand everything until the very end.
Written in a short story/vignette style these individual “chapters” all connect, not just with the previous story, but with all the previous stories, even though they take place in different time periods. I liked how some of my favorite characters reappeared (sort-of) in subsequent stories. I don’t know how Kawakami pulled this off, because I usually find this kind of thing annoying and hard to follow.
The ending shows that humanity is becoming extinct and there is something comforting in its inevitability.
I know that I will be thinking about this for a very long time and I am so glad I read it.