Mieko Kawakami

Bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami invites readers back into her immediately recognizable fictional world with this new, extraordinary novel and demonstrates yet again why she is one of today's most uncategorizable, insightful, and talented novelists. Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it. As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko's past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.

All the Lovers in the Night

It’s like the night is breathing. Like the sound of melted light.

 “Sometimes you can be okay with something, then the next day comes and it’s a totally different story.”

maia

The light at night is special because the overwhelming light of day has left us, and the remaining half draws on everything it has to keep the world around us bright.

Marsheila Harvy

I'm touching you, I said quietly. If this means I can't get any closer, I'm fine with that, because I'm touching you. 

Imie Kent-Muller

Why does the night have to be so beautful? As I wallk through the night, I remember what Mitsutsuka said to me. “Because at night, only half the world remains." 

The light at night is special because the overwhelming light of day has left us, and the remaining halt draws on everything it has to keep the world around us bright. 

For a little while, I just stood there, gazing up at the night sky. The layers and layers of clouds, not exactly white or gray, hung in the night sky like the outline of some kind of creature, enormous and moving without a sound, a sight that made my heart race. The brilliant white moon showed its face.

“I’m really not,” Hijiri answered forcefully. “It has nothing to do with believing or not believing. It’s more like…  I don’t want to rely on anything, no matter what it is. Whatever answer's on that paper, I don't want it, unless I get there on my own, using my own head. I'l decide what I'm going to do with my own life.”

Things that I was certain I hadn't noticed at the time, things that probably hadn't even happened, and things I never imagined Id remember sprang up and multiplied like wildflowers, growing silently and with incredible speed, filling my eyes and ears and heart.

In my chair, I surrendered myself to a world of sound that could only be described as sparkling. It made my head sway, and my breath grew deeper as my legs climbed up that evanescent staircase, each step a sheet of light. They would shimmer to life the second my sole made contact, then fizzle into stardust when I lifted my foot, only to be reborn as yet another step, gently showing me the way. That slowly winding spiral stairway of light ascended freely through the dark, and though I was unsure where it was taking me, or what I would find when I arrived, as long as the music was playing. As I climbed one step after another, I ran the soft part of my finger over every gleaming note, stringing them together in a necklace that l placed over my chest, or stretching them with both hands into a hoop of light that I could step inside and pass through, Over and over. I took a giant breath, my utterly transparent chest sparkling with light as if I’d swallowed a nebula from tens of thousands of light years away. My exhalation, sparkling WIth a mist of light, hovered before me, but if I scooped it up in my hands and took another deep breath, my arms and throat began to glow from the inside, down to my palms, and as gazed into them, I realized I was floating in space. I shut my eyes and held out my arms, shaking my body and head every which way, dancing and stirring up the light as I waltzed endlessly around my apartment.

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