A book a day: Hiromi Kawakami: The Third Love

Original Language: Japanese

Títutulus original: Sandome no koi (Third Love)

Translation: Yoko Ogihara

Year of publication: 2020

Valoración: advisable

This is a somewhat strange love novel. The protagonist, Riko, tells us the story with the love of her life: how he knew that she loved him since she attended preschool, while he, on the other hand, was already 16 years old. Is it strange? You could say that it is a kind of lolita in reverse. He tells how that feeling germinated and grew incessantly, until, finally, when she reached enough, they could marry.

The narration develops in retrospect, which allows us to intuit that the reason to tell it is that the story did not end well. Who seemed to be the perfect couple, that person who accompanied him from the earliest childhood, gradually begins to distance himself, to absent from the home and to receive calls from other women. It follows immediately that her husband was not the man she believed. The fact of having maintained such a close relationship and that she was so attached to him since childhood leads us to think about even more unpleasant reasons. Everything is possible.

The situation twists when Riko becomes obsessed with women looking for her husband, fearful of losing to those who consider her soulmate. This uncertainty torments her to the point of provoking vivid dreams; He does not dream of her husband, even with the present, but dreams herself as a prostitute of the Edo era or a concubine of the Heian era, immersed in her own stories of torments and passionate love. These different personalities and circumstances put in perspective the limited relationship that Riko maintains in the present and, at the same time, show us the vicissitudes of the love life of women, so different and, at the same time, so similar.

This novel is a strange mixture of pink, fantasy novel and formation novel. Faithful to his style, Kawakami writes in a simple and direct way, using short phrases without too many ornaments or metaphors, which makes reading very pleasant despite its considerable extension. I would not say that it is one of its best novels, but it is a highly recommended option for those who enjoy their style. Those who do not know them can start with Sensei did not kaban or the loves of Nishino, shorter books that allow a clear idea of ​​what they will find in the third love.