Mieko Kawakami’s All the Lovers in the Night speaks to the part of the human that yearns for connection. It illustrates, too, the difficulty of reaching out and making those connections, especially in the aftermath of deep and abiding trauma.
The novel follows the unhappy life of a young woman, Fuyuko, who works as a proofreader. This woman is the “dictionary definition of a miserable person”. Fuyuko calls herself so on the occasion of seeing her own reflection during a blood drive; it is an apt if unfortunate description, and it is impossible to examine this novel without at least touching upon Kawakami’s words here.
Fuyuko’s portrayal is a frank examination of a woman stuck in place. She is good at her job, detail-oriented and conscientious, but there is at first a curious vacancy of any emotional dimension to her accomplishments as a proofreader. This vacancy gives way to the realisation that there really is nothing Fuyuko gains from her work by way of spiritual sustenance. Her approach towards proofreading is reminiscent of an automaton at work: when she at one point describes the way in which she forgets everything about a proofread title after she finishes the project, I was made to think of a computer’s disk drive, wiped clean and overwritten by the next assignment, and the next.
The desire for connection, the need for love at long last allows Fuyuko to reach out to another human being. These break the stifling veil of silence that chokes the novel’s protagonist and she is at long last capable of reaching out to another. Kawakami’s final chapter avoids the saccharine sweetness of a Jane Eyre-style ending but rather brings to the fore a very different relationship.
In some ways, I was reminded of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy while reading this: here, too, there is an elision of the narrator’s identity, at least to begin with. The reader learns much more about the circumstances of Fuyuko’s life beyond the external ones. What I did learn about Fuyuko stumped me: why was she only taking an evening walk across Tokyo for her birthdays? These smaller, specific details began to create a picture of who Fuyuko was, a picture that clicks into place after the reader is shown Fuyuko through her own perspective on the reflection, that textbook definition of a miserable person. Following this and a flashback chapter in the middle of the novel, Fuyuko’s identity easier to understand if no more accessible.
What I at first took for elision was in truth the chocking weight of depression. A lingering darkness that swallows Fuyuko’s light.
Some of the most unusual and vivid sections of the novel discuss the qualities of light. Fuyuko comes alive during those, her fascination breaking through to the dark clouds of her melancholy and depression. Whether thinking about it alone or discussing the quality of light with an interlocutor, a man she meets at a cultural centre, Fuyuko brightens up. Light, the absence and presence of it, lingers in Fuyuko’s perception of the world. Kawakami plays with light with such skill; likewise, light plays with Fuyuko’s keen gaze, memorably and to All the Lovers in the Night‘s last page.
Kawakami’s dialogue is exemplary. The conversations between Fuyuko and Hijiri Ishikawa are as masterful for what they omit as they are for what is written on the page; the two women strike a friendship that makes for an emotional core to the novel. This friendship plays out through what I like to think of the stages of knowing another person: from seeing the version of themselves they put forward to the version of themselves others perceive, and finally reaching a space where they are together known.
by FilipMagnus