Ending discussion
I don’t think I necessarily found the end of this book ambiguous. The central character lives in a world of steady disappearances, gradually her own body disappears until she vanishes completely. Most humans on the island meet the same fate, but a few are immune to the effects. They are initially repressed, but by the end of the story they can emerge to rebuild their lives.
I think early in the book I had hoped we would get more exposition on the forces behind the disappearances. The fact there was a memory police implied that there was a powerful state controlling what was happening as part of repressing their population. We also had some insight that some humans may carry a genetic trait that meant they weren’t affected in the same way by the disappearances.
But in the end we were just left in the dark about what happened to this society. Whether this was a natural phenomenon, the work of aliens, the work of a sorcerer, or the science of an evil genius - we will never know. And as interesting as it would have been to know, I suspect it might have been an anticlimax. I don’t mind that we don’t understand the “why” of what was going in the background. I’m happy just to accept the element of magical realism and focus on the effects it has on our central characters. Although I would love to know what process might make all the birds disappear, or certain flowers to all die at the same time!
It’s a tragic ending for our main character. We hoped she might find some redemption, that the connection with R and the hidden objects might bring back her memory. But this is Ogawa and I don’t think we were ever expecting a traditional happy ending!
As for rereading books - for me I do this very little. I reread Dune before the movie came out as it was a long time since I’d read it and I wanted to refresh the story, but I can’t think of anything else I’ve reread recently in English.
I’m happy to reread books in another language though. Being familiar with the story can help with becoming confident when in the early stages of reading in another language. And rereading books in their original language is always very rewarding.
I read コンビニ人間 in English and then a few years later in Japanese. Like gen-shk I suspect that my reading speed when reading in Japanese forces me to analyse the story more than when reading in my native language. Plus there are always elements in stories that don’t translate well. There always seems to be a real richness that comes from going back to a story in the original language.
