Any spoilers, for the current chapters must be behind spoilers or detail curtains. When we get further in you don’t need to hide details that were revealed in previous chapters.
Always mention where you are in the book when discussing, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.
Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting! But please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That can be part of the discussion too and I’m sure some folks would be happy to help.
Even if you don’t read the chapter(s) in time, you are still encouraged to post in the thread for that reading once you have finished it. I advise not reading ahead in the threads as you may see spoilers.
So here we are at the end! Firstly, thank you so much for hosting the book club. I probably would not have read this without the club.
First things first: I think I overall enjoyed my time with this book, but I don’t know if I would have if I wasn’t a Japanese learner. The main thing is that I felt as I was going along like I felt like I was becoming more capable of parsing long sentences, especially ones that were twisty-turny weaving around a lot. I think the main thing is - despite appearances - the vocab used in the book is actually relatively limited in scope; I feel the amount of lookups I needed to make by, oh, about halfway through had fallen quite significantly and it was getting easier and easier to start to read in a flow state for longer periods of time. Now I still don’t think I completely understood everything in that flow state, but I will probably revisit this in a year or two and see how my understanding is.
Now about the actual contents. No surprises if you’ve been following my posts; I think overall I enjoyed the book when it was being very Big Emotions and much much less whenever it was getting into magical realism. Nanoka and her gradual growing-up over the course of the book was very satisfying, but I just completely don’t see the need for it to have the magical realism elements of future-her or alt-universe her or whatever at all. Obviously the final final chapter/epilogue which throws up some ‘was it all a bunch of dreams within a dream’ sort of stuff messes with that even more but tbh by that point I was just sort of tired of the whole thing and happy for it to end.
Caveat: I do think a lot of this is also tied to the fact I am a learner and interpreting this is all a lot of effort, so the effort > reward value sort of gets messed up compared to the average reader. It might even be in another medium (manga, anime) I am more willing to buy in, so to speak. But in book form I can’t say I really was enchanted by what was happening.
I probably missed this, as it seems. I only read that the adult Nanoka also has recurring dreams. Hers contain the question: Are you happy? And so far she can answer: Yes.
For me the book did not give a solution, it just hinted at possibilities. Anyway, I hate books or movies where they show something seemingly supernatural and at the end comes some natural explanation out of thin air. This book thankfully does not do that.
Btw: I like the end, which plays with kanji readings 菜の花 vs. 奈ノ花.
I was in this book club and read and finished the book weeks ago like I barely even remember the book at this point. I did get into it as I had mentioned weeks back around the grocery store incident and plowed through to the finish. I also read this book properly on the Kindle without the audiobook. It was a long time ago but I believe what happened at the end was: she (forgot all their names) has now grown old and is together with the man (a boy in the story) whom she helped to encourage his artwork skill. She is now a writer and he is a painter. The bulk of the book is her dreaming back to her childhood about how she met him and how she both became inspired to become a writer and how she had helped to encourage her now-husband (or partner, etc.,) to become a painter and saved him from becoming 引きこもり.
The book was overall ok, but as I said before the moment I had to realise/admit to myself what the outcome would be I somewhat lost interest, unfortunately. Especially the last chapters dragged along for me. I guess I finished it only because I was reading it with the book club.
Nevertheless, reading it together with all of you has been fun!
Haha, same I can’t claim to have been mislead with that title, but it still feels that way.
Though I guess we are meant to think that she accurately dreamed about her actual childhood? So everything did happen, in a way.
Also, just how often did we get a title drop?? Feels like constantly once Minamis storyline was over.
overall thoughts
I did like it overall, and I also enjoyed the overall theme of the book. “What makes you happy” came up a bunch and we did see some varied answers to that question.
I kind of wish we could see how the “lessons” Nanoka learned affected her behavior more.
Minami taught Nanoka to be open about her feelings and got her to talk to her parents, thereby preventing their deaths.
… But was that a one off? Did Nanokas relationship to her parents improve after that? … Guess not, considering how little they appear in the story Oh, Nanoka has problems in school and a friend of hers is getting bullied? Welp, guess Nanoka doesn’t have to talk to her parents about it. She truly internalized Minamis lesson, huh?
Abazure-san talked about how perceiving others as beneath her caused her to become alienated and lonely, thereby helping Nanokas relationship with Kiryu.
… Did this affect how she treats others in her class? And how the other kids perceive and treat her? The last chapter takes place many years later, did she get any friends other than Kiryu? … And no, I am not counting the cat!
I guess Nanoka paid attention during the presentation of the other kids last chapter, out of respect. Is that the big character growth moment?
… did the bullies ever get scolded for how they treated Kiryu? Guess we will never find out.
And grandma… Don’t really remember what it was Maybe because I was very tired, but I don’t remember what grandma taught her
The writing style was very fun! Probably the biggest reason I enjoyed the book so much. And while I would have liked a more vague “These three are future Nanokas” and more actual change from Nanoka, I did find the ending with her being happy and thankful for what she has very nice.
Thanks @暁のルナ for hosting! The club was super fun - I would have never picked up this book otherwise!
I agree, this is a feeling I had for a lot of the book. The connection between the lessons learned and the futures avoided just wasn’t there for me.
I also said this in the What are you reading today? thread, but I didn’t like her ending up with 桐生くん, it makes it seem like nothing happened in her life between elementary school and being an adult. I don’t mind “falls in love with childhood best friend” stories, but those at least show characters falling in love as adults/teens. It just kills the realism of a story for me, to have someone’s entire life revolve around a cast of like 3 characters total.
Overall, a smooth read, slow enough that it didn’t feel right reading just a bit every week. I liked the writing style well enough that I might read another book by the same author, but hopefully one with a very different protagonist.
Phew - I’m finally through this last chapter. I feel like this was the hardest one from a vocab perspective… I had to look up so much! Not a pleasent way to end it, after it was going fairly smoothly before.
Ending thoughts
Yeah, I think that’s it. She talks about Abazure-san & co later in the final chapter and it’s clear that she’s not just talking about dream characters, first when she mentions that by now she gets the meaning of the name “Abazure-san” (implying that she didn’t earlier… when it happened in her childhood) and even more clearly so when she says that in the end she wasn’t able to meet them again.
I think we got it once for each character right before they disappeared.
Which is even more weird. What the heck was their dream? Was it about their own version of their childhood? Why? And why did they have it again shortly before disappearing?
And what’s the significance of the repeating dream anyway? It doesn’t seem to play any role in the whole story!
Overall thoughts
I agree with that. I have nothing against magical realism and I welcomed it at the time when it started, but I don’t think it was handled particularly satisfying and in the end detracted from the whole “we helped each other” thing. I think it would’ve been a fine story without that.
What I really enjoyed in the book was the witty writing, and I also liked Nanoka’s personality and thoughts in general.
But that wasn’t the actual dream, it was the message she got out of it. So… what did Minami dream about?
She didn’t have any magical Nanokas helping her with both the childhood itself and figuring out what happiness means, and everything went to shit, so… did she just dream of her childhood where her parents died?
In Nanoka’s case I can see the dream having that message, reminding her of all the things she learnt and her friends, but in Minami and Abazure-san’s cases… wouldn’t they only dream about how it all went so wrong, with no redeeming things, only regret?
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I thought that their dreams were of seeing the younger versions of themselves and not the older like the narrator Nanoka? There was so much revealed when the line would get said that I wasn’t really that focused on what they meant until it was brought up here
You mean e.g. Minami-san dreaming of her meeting with our present Nanoka on the rooftop? But… that’s just the present for Minami-san at the time when we get Minami-san’s “I had the same dream again” line.
I checked a bit of the text to test some other theory and found that you can probably guess in the direction of what you wrote, as Abasuresan actually told Nanoka her dream, which was very much the situation, Nanoka was in at that moment.
What I actually was after is that Nanoka not only got help from those three, but they also got something back from her, something that in the end might help them out of their current “slump“. So you could say that they all no longer needed each other after that last common scene.
Yeah I was thinking of Abazure-san in particular, so maybe it only fits there? I remember Minami-san saying it but I don’t remember a lot of the circumstances around it. I also thought Obaa-chan was kinda rambling when she said it
These were interesting loanwords I’ve never seen before XD
ザッピング
ワイドショー
My own interpretations/ramblings:
Nanoka has the power to see/meet people from the future (according to obaachan). My other theory was that her cat (March?) was actually the ones with powers but I tried looking up cat yokai and nothing really clicks yet… but it was interesting that she was from a future that didn’t exist yet and has a full tail in the future and is implied to be the same cat that met all 4 Nanokas in the past. All future Nanokas constantly have dreams of child Nanoka while they continue to live in their own timelines and learn to have hope… well it’s a bit vague with Minami… hopefully she becomes a writer and can be content knowing that the other Nanoka will grow up with parents
Minami-san taught Nanoka to be more appreciative of her parents, which saves them. It’s implied that future Nanoka is now capable of making choices in life that led to her happiness, whether it’s with or without the parents (totally normal to live separate from your parents as an adult), but unfortunately the author didn’t really touch on this in the ending at all. However, iirc Nanoka’s father did join for the final presentation that took place after avoiding the accident. Also, she decides to follow her dreams of becoming a writer.
Abazure-san taught her not to look down on people and be more openminded, and Nanoka does seem to demonstrate this by actually listening to others during the presentation. Future Nanoka has a writing career instead of hurting her body and mind like Abazure-san after realizing she is all alone.
Obaachan I guess taught her that she is the one in control of her own happiness, but also that she can be happy despite what life throws at her… which seems to be the message they wanted to close with?
Thinking that English speakers would misunderstand Kiryu as kill you is such a weird stretch Definitely never came to mind when first introduced to Kiryu from Ryu ga Gotoku XD
Thank you for hosting this book club! I’m horrible with finishing Japanese novels so this might have been the first novel I’ve completed of this length!
It was good practice for me since I was able to read and enjoy the story without much lookups (which is still a challenge for my attention span since I’m more used to VNs) + also because it was vague enough to need some interpretation of what actually happened. The weekly schedule helped a lot too in breaking out the parts into easily digestible sections. Definitely makes me more confident in finishing another novel
I also have a higher attention span when reading VNs. What helped me with this book is reading it while listening to the fantastic audio book - my attention span didn’t quite reach VN level, but was much improved. (Of course that advice is too late for you for this book, but maybe it can help you with another book in the future.)
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I can’t claim to have been mislead with that title, but it still feels that way.
Oh, Nanoka has problems in school and a friend of hers is getting bullied? Welp, guess Nanoka doesn’t have to talk to her parents about it. She truly internalized Minamis lesson, huh?
Definitely never came to mind when first introduced to 
