I am reading...

This is a strange book, a strange world: I am used to reading Banana Yoshimoto's books and to embracing her inner thoughts, feelings and visualizing every thought, idea and detail she so delicately writes about. This time was different though: maybe because the main character is a pregnant woman with an unconventional life - according to Japanese standards, that is - but I did not feel as touched as usual by the ethereal universe of Delfini (I read it in Italian)... It would be more correct to say that I felt touched at times only, here and there... which made those paragraphs even more precious, like keepsakes I should hold on to dearly.

The dream-like episodes did capture my imagination and I did feel carried into a dimension where reality meets the unreal, but for the rest the scenes were too culturally oriented so too far away from my imagination and feelings. I felt in the middle of the sea, with no lighthouse on the horizon as it were... Or maybe it was the fact that describing her pregnancy, the main character entered a sphere where I cannot follow her - only experience could possibly give some meaning or leading thread and I lack that experience. The story then becomes so personal that it verges on the intimate and somehow encloses the characters in their own world where the reader cannot reach them - and possibly should not even try to follow them as they enter a very private property.