The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami

Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans.

This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

Kawakami's novel treats its feminist themes with a light hand but still slyly lands its points. Kawakami is the winner of multiple awards in her native Japan, including the Akutagawa and Women Writers (Joryu Bungako Sho) prizes. When she breaks up with him, he asks her to marry him, but she walks away. For example, Natsumi, who carried on an affair with Nishino while married to another man, decides, 'I may not have liked him, but I was in love with Nishino' and remembers fondly the odd way he pronounced 'parfait.' Manami, a businesswoman, declares proudly that Nishino was three years younger and her subordinate at work when she embarked on an affair with him. The women in this collection are vibrant, lusty, and clearly the agents of their own love lives. But in a sly turn by Kawakami, the somewhat feckless Nishino is mostly a catalyst for the women to explore their own feelings of sensuality and sexuality. It's unclear exactly what Nishino looks like or even does for a living-some kind of white-collar work for a company. In 10 chapters from 10 different characters' points of view, the women remember aspects of Nishino's life, from the return of his ghost to his awkward adolescence to his womanizing days from his 20s to late middle age. The title character remains a cipher, but the women who memorialize him are vividly rendered individuals and together form a lively spectrum of female desire. Kawakami ( Record of a Night Too Brief, 2017, etc.) explores desire and the elusive nature of love through the voices of 10 women who all loved the same man, Nishino Yukihiko, at different points in their lives and his.

The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami