i rarely write reviews this detailed but I am so utterly shaken by this one that I cannot help but try to convey the bitter taste it left in my mouth. i finished it with an uncomfortable nausea and a grief that still coils in my stomach.
both Mamiya and Sada are proof that tenderness can survive even when it is intimately acquainted with the grotesque. they remain painfully human though their actions no longer resemble humanity, and because of that, i understood them in places where i could not necessarily relate. there is something almost unbearable about loving another person beyond the usefulness of language.
wanting to give another person everything the body can surrender, only to discover that even being consumed would not satisfy the desire to keep them here. however, their relationship itself was remarkably restrained and i think that was due to them largely being at peace with what they could not give.
that was the grief i carried away from this story. even with Mamiya’s ending, it suggests that a person may live perfectly well without intimacy when they have never depended upon it, but once they have known the relief of being understood, returning to solitude is not a return at all. the absence of being known can become more unbearable than the solitude that came before it.
i also favor the authors refusal to reward love merely because it was genuine. reality does not become generous when people finally find one another. perhaps that is why the story affected me so deeply. it offered no comforting lie about love conquering everything. instead, it suggested that love may conquer nothing at all and still become the most consequential thing that ever happens to us.
i rarely write reviews this detailed but I am so utterly shaken by this one that I cannot help but try to convey the bitter taste it left in my mouth. i finished it with an uncomfortable nausea and a grief that still coils in my stomach.
both Mamiya and Sada are proof that tenderness can survive even when it is intimately acquainted with the grotesque. they remain painfully human though their actions no longer resemble humanity, and because of that, i understood them in places where i could not necessarily relate. there is something almost unbearable about loving another person beyond the usefulness of language.
wanting to give another person everything the body can surrender, only to discover that even being consumed would not satisfy the desire to keep them here. however, their relationship itself was remarkably restrained and i think that was due to them largely being at peace with what they could not give.
that was the grief i carried away from this story. even with Mamiya’s ending, it suggests that a person may live perfectly well without intimacy when they have never depended upon it, but once they have known the relief of being understood, returning to solitude is not a return at all. the absence of being known can become more unbearable than the solitude that came before it.
i also favor the authors refusal to reward love merely because it was genuine. reality does not become generous when people finally find one another. perhaps that is why the story affected me so deeply. it offered no comforting lie about love conquering everything. instead, it suggested that love may conquer nothing at all and still become the most consequential thing that ever happens to us.