"All the lovers in the night" by Meiko Kawakani

An audio book.

Fuyuko Irie walks in the night listening to Schubert - it's like melting light. Each birthday she takes a walk alone at night.

She's 34, living in Japan. a proof-reader. She makes floor plans, and lists of characters, checking for continuity. She worked in a place for 8 years, colleagues giving up trying to talk to her, then went freelance, working with Hijidi who's impressed with her because of the way she worked. No book is ever perfect, they agree, there's always an error. But you have to keep trying. Hijidi's the only friend she has. She's chatty, with lovers.

People tell her she's allergic to fun. She doesn't wear make-up or drink alcohol. Hijidi thinks people like that are like religious fundamentalists. She experiments with alcohol, falls asleep in a waiting room. A physics teacher, Mitsutsuka, comes to her aid. She doesn't know what to say, ending up saying "I like light". Fortunately he used to be curious about light. They arrange to meet. She goes to a bookshop to get science books. She sees self-improvement books there.

We learn that at school, when 18, after 3 months of regular phonecalls, a schoolmate Misono had sex with her on their first date. Rape really - her first and last sex.

People tell her intimate things. She learns about human nature from them. An old work collegue says that Hijiri's difficult to work with, and a nymphomaniac. An old friend Noriko says that having children doesn't alway help - she and her husband had been sexless for years.

She comments in detail by email to Mitsutsuka about a physics book he lends her. Then he lends her a Chopin CD.

She asks him where light goes. He tells her about refraction, about why the sky is blue. In the end all light is absorbed. No light lasts forever.

She becomes obsessed with Mitsutsuka. He's 58. They speak for 3 hours/week in a coffee bar. She severs contact for weeks, then phones him. Only now does she ask if he's married. She asks if he's thought about sleeping with her. Hijidi sends her some of her clothes.

At the end, 3 years later, we learn that Hijidi is pregnant, resolutely single, and that Mitsutsuka had stood her up 3 years before, on her birthday. He'd confessed that he wasn't a teacher. He was an unemployed factory worker. She still likes the light.

Other reviews

• goodreads
• Cameron Bassindale (As is often the case with Kawakami novels, the protagonist Irie Fuyuko is a reclusive, fundamentally unhappy woman approaching her forties ... Fuyuko’s inability to talk meaningfully with those around her is indicative of a major motif in Kawakami’s work; atomized characters leading atomized lives, yearning for connection and being wholly unable to do so.)
• Jo Hamya (what makes Kawakami’s novel so brilliant is an understanding of why women might willingly adhere to regressive modes of performative femininity, even while they criticize it. ... Kawakami’s novel is uncompromisingly candid in its appraisal of the harm women inflict on one another, while never losing sight of the overarching structures that lead them to do so in the first place.)
• Clare Spaulding (she is a single, childless woman who is berated by other women for these choices ... The epilogue indicates that both women felt most righteous in their independence, and that “the night had so many different lights” for each of them. Light is not found in others, but in our own self-fulfillment.)