Add to your TBR pile: All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

If you’ve been on my BookTok, it’s no secret how much I love Mieko Kawakami’s writing—I’m still emotionally recovering from Heaven and I plan on rereading Breasts and Eggs later this year (even though it’s been maybe nine months since I’ve read it). I was ecstatic when I got my hands on an ARC of her next book, All the Lovers in the Night (thanks Europa Editions and NetGalley!)

Our narrator, Fuyuko Irie leads a quiet life as a freelance copyeditor in a city where it is difficult to organically forge relationships—the only person she speaks to on a regular basis is her coworker, Hijiri. The only time she goes out at night is on Christmas Eve (her birthday) to look at light, one of the few things that brings Fuyuko beauty and solace.

One day, Fuyuko looks at the person in the mirror and does not recognize the depleted person she sees in the mirror. Determined to change, she forms a relationship with a man, a high school physics teacher who shares with Fuyuko a passion for light.

I at first was under the impression this book was going to be centered around romance, but while this relationship is important to the story, at the heart of it, All the Lovers in the Night is a book about self-discovery, the necessity of vulnerability, and unlikely friendships . I identified with Fuyuko’s guarded interiority and the undoing that comes with Fuyuko confronting a past and reconciling it with a present self.

All the Lovers in the Night has both a poetic and colloquial cadence. Kawakami’s writing is poetic, visceral yet tender. I found myself deeply moved by the recurrent image and threads of light throughout the book and how light is a thing that both reflects and gives form in darkness. I even have been finding myself increasingly writing about light in my poetry because of this book!

All the Lovers in the Night comes out on May 12, 2022—let me know how you like it when you get your hands on this beautiful book.