Claudine Harper

Very difficult book. It was rambling and directionless. Some awful descriptions of Annabelle’s thoughts, like the one about buying salad and a salad spinner. Benny goes from having objects speak to him to having murderous thoughts towards his mother. That’s quite a leap and quite different thoughts, and I couldn’t sympathise with him after that. I couldn’t imagine Annabelle in my head, nor her relationship with her son; somehow she was once a beautiful blonde with violet eyes, yet now she’s just fat. I couldn’t imagine why or how this happened from her moments with Kenji to now. When did she start getting fat? But also it’s as if she had never known her son before the father died. She acts like he’s only just started living with her. She only reminisces on when he’s 5. He’s 13 and she treats him like a weekend mother who’s forgotten he’s older. It doesn't make sense. The foreign characters with their accents bother me as well, somehow it’s a little racist that these characters’ only characteristics is that they are foreign. Throw in a manic pixie dream girl to boot - with a non-binary ferret. Of course. Kenji blacks out one normal jazz jamming night from having weed, (of course, because that’s what jazz musicians do right!? *Stereotypical character actions!*and not matching Kenji’s personality from little we know of it. It’s merely that he is a jazz musician) Implausible that he’d black out on the floor outside, only feet from his front door, and be there all morning until a heavy truck comes by and no one notices him and he’s run over. And the mother said to him before he left don’t bother coming back. This doesn’t come up as an awful reminder to her through her grief. It doesn’t suggest love was there but immaturity and selfishness. She’s constantly acting immature. The teapot moment was the moment I couldn’t stand her any longer. She never really tries to tidy her house or do the right thing by her son, no remorse, or empathy for her son. She cared more about her weird job, which in itself made no sense as a job, and took over her house. There’s other parts which don’t work well, the book talking, Benny talking back to it, the fact this book preaches about having too much stuff but this book has double the length of words it needs! It also topic-dumps (important socio-political topics are mentioned but never properly dealt with: 2011 tsunami, hurricane Katrina, forest fires, school shootings, riots, homelessness, capitalism, pronouns, mental health drugs and therapy...there are only mentions in the book), you cannot just mention these things when it doesn’t affect the plot. It’s just a mess and very disappointing as I have read all of Ozeki’s other books and they were all excellent. This needed a very strict editor.