I think this would have been better as a short story. Over half the novel is a slow reflective narrative about the main character’s childhood and involvement with several women. I was never engaged as Hajime shares this back story with a flat sense of self-recrimination and self-pity. Once the story catches up to the present and the choices he must make as an adult do i find myself caring about the struggles.

When the women come back into his life decades later, the story begins. The character Hajime revisits the backstory - his childhood, his regrets - as he reconnects with a classmate and with the woman who was his childhood best friend. In his adult context, i can care about the self recrimination and regrets.

I will likely reread Kazo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World for contrast as another reflection on regret and choices.