Review by James Colyer Tassinari

Yes, Mieko Kawakami is a gem.

Taking us on a freeride, this less than two hundred page novel feels like an epic. A story that dignifies friendship and untangles the highs and lows of bullying, to the point of questioning life itself. Maybe learning a thing or two about life, and buddhism: life is suffering. But, what highs does a bullying experience have? Finding your true self, and truth in others.

The story of two classmates that are constantly oppressed by fellow students creates a specialbond that Mieko captures in a poetic and coherent prose. And that’s a tough task for a book to accomplish: words and sentences that become part of our memory.

Is the kind of story that stays with you long after you finish it. I mean, everybody here has been bullied. If you think the contrary: (1) you’re probably avoiding therapy sessions; (2) you weren’t aware of it; (3) your brain blocked all of the trauma, covering the scars until late adulthood. Scars play a pivotal role in the novel, and yes, scissors are a must. A banger, in gen Z dialect.

So how come a novel with soft-light paperback, pleasant-vivid colors and divine title has one of the darkest narratives of all time? Simple, that’s how heaven feels like: safe, daunting, overwhelming and somehow petrifying.

I personally think heaven is a place with no memory. And the way Kojima, one of the maincharacters of the novel, presents this to the narrator and lazy eye duderino, made me perceive things, if not people, in a different light.

I too have a lazy eye. In fact, I think this is my first time writing about it. I went through it all: eye patches, tests, eye drops, moving a pencil close to your nose and then away from it, over and over until you got a bit dizzy, being extremely shy and self-aware, difficulty having a face to face
conversation, speaking in public. You get the idea.

Fortunately I was disciplined enough, and my strabismus condition got better. I still have a lazy eye though, it’s just not that obvious now. Well, sometimes it is. And that’s normal, part of life.

It was fun to wear an eyepatch. I still remember the sound of the band-aid being pulled off my eyebrows. A smoothing sound that was. I wore it for several hours in my left eye, my strong eye, so I could train the muscles of my right eye, my weak eye (same as the narrator’s). I switched the eye patch occasionally and got rid of it by the time I entered elementary school.

Members of the lazy eye club (sounds so cool when said out loud) will confirm the following:

1. Yes, our eyes hurt (a lot). Some weeks more than others.

2. Yes, we tend to read smartphones, and other stuff, with one eye closed (our eyes can’t keep the pace and wiggle around the screen in an endless dyslexia-trance-new-age impromptu. Please, don’t try this at home).

3. Yes, we are funny as fuck.

4. Yes, we may have dated lazy eyed duderinas.

5. Yes, we play eye-coordinating sports like first class athletes. How so? Overthinking.

Going back to the novel, there was a time when I was obsessed with the idea of getting surgery.
But I was told that I wasn’t a good candidate. There was a risk of developing double vision, just
like the narrator in the story. Because of that, I learned to accept who I was and realized that the people who were truly my friends liked me for who I was, not for how I looked. And that is something I learned recently. You are not your thoughts, nor your body. In the end, the only thing
that matters is your spirit.

Mieko makes us believe in the kindred heart. That even in the worst of moments, the right people
can still be found.

Even then, one of life’s greatest gifts is to share our suffering with someone we trust. Someone who doesn’t pretend fondness or behaves like a crazy narcissist that tries a new monologue each
time we meet at a restaurant or cafe, bragging about their problems while I patiently wait for my turn to speak. We don’t need punching bags or people to talk to. We need moral support, people to be with. People that appreciate our silence and create a whole new conversation out of it. Small or large pauses that make us feel seen, loved, and cherished.

It is great to have people that support us at our lowest, but those who are with us at our highest are the real deal. Why? Simply because they wanna see our best version. Some people are only present when bad things happen to us. But as soon as we reach our new highest (could be a
dream job, personal project, long term goal) they disappear, out of jealousy or hatred. That’s a red flag.

Be cautious. Seek your highest, study your lowest and always be your Heaven. There is no better retreat than within.

This tale of friendship teaches us how to care for someone else: to convey their past, ignite their present and hold on to their future. That a victim, though sorrowful, remains full of hope.