The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe

So, I've been reading books for 10 years and it's absolutely the worse book I've ever touched. Let's start with characters

Mitsu: the most crybaby I've seen. I'll talk about his inability to act later, but let's the take the books "It's needed to show an idea". So you're saying Mitsu represents a country in turbulence? Why? The writer couldn't find a suiting character and just wrote this character specially for the plot to happen. I hate this kind of things. In literature, you should concentrate on the language, the wordplay, the "painting" you're trying to paint. To put a character with focused on inability to do anything in the plot is like getting the nose of a person wrong and then cutting it with a knife and placing it rightly – it's not art, it's not sophisticated, it's inability to draw a character. But he's too intertwined with other characters, so let's talk about them

Natsumi(Mitsu's wife): depreesed young woman. Let's talk about one of the first episodes – their baby. There was some tumor on the baby's head, the doctors did operation to get rid of it and the baby "Lost his emotions". So he became like a "plant". Also a friend of Mitsu committed suicide(hang himself from the roof, head paitned in crimson and cucumber up his anus(don't ask me)). So Mitsu is depressed by this and doesn't want to do anything. And what about his wife? She becomes alcoholic. She just drinks whiskey whenever she can and never talks. Not a bit of emotional support to her husband. There are few episodes of Mitsu offering her to sleep again, to have a new baby and start new life. But she's absolutely disgraced of sex(remember this) and she's just there, depressed. Also she gets into Takashi's ideas(about it later on)

Takashi(Mitsu's brother): short overview of his life – raped her sister til she committed suicide in teenage years, tried raping a girl whent they got back to their village(with Mitsu, Natsumi and a group of Taka's followers), but she resisted so he killed her with a stone, now the absolute killer – he slept with Natsu and impregnated her. Remember when I said that Natsumi is disgraced of sex? Mitsu gets disgraced by Taka and moves to storehouse(another building) and his wife leaves him for Taka. Mitsu is sure his wife isn't going to go NSFW, because she had trauma. Trauma you say? 3 days and they're sleeping together, having a baby, planning to marry. Should I say how disgraceful is it? Also Taka idolises violence, rises a riot and then commits suicide because Mitsu presses on him saying he's "A disgracing person, a rat, you'd never get killed or kill yourself". What does Mitsu's wife say? "Idiot, you drove him into suicide instead of emotional support(!!, the wife who got alcoholic and didn't support her kwn husband). Now, what does Mitsu do with Taka's baby in Natsumi's belly? Decides to raise him with the other baby, whom they gave to orphanage but decided to get back.

Show me two worse characters than Taka and Natsumi.

Then, the literally style – Dostoevsky and worse(I hate him, he's dense, not a bit creative, without any attention to words, too plot-driven). So there's nothing to be like "He's writing exceptionally good(like the case of Lolita), so the plot is secondary." No! The plot with the characters I've described is the main focus

What do we get? Cheat on your husband with his brother, get a baby, the brother will commit suicide and your husband will raise the baby, but you'll still idolise the brother.

What's the basic idea of the book – mythology/country. As I get it, Oē wanted to give the impression of invalid country(there's a big plot about a riot in 1860, and the great-grandfather of the main hero, whom his brother idealises and wants to get closer, so it's a "story of invalid family). I think I get the "Mitsu is Japan, he needs new life, without forgetting his past(WW2, the baby of Taka, as I understand it)". Does it make the book bette? NO.

And this book has Nobel Prize. I've lost any respect to the committee after this. "We won't give Nobel Prize to Nabokov, because he's immoral, but we'll give it to a person in who's book a thrice-raper is idealised." I read it only because the Nobel Prize praised it. At least Yasunori Kawabata was a classy writer and I enjoyed him(I read "Snow Country").

I hated everything about it – NTR, the plot, the atmosphere, the locations(only two locations at max), the characters, the style, the wordplays and everything. Nothing good, just ruined morality, mood and it just genuinely pissed me off. (I've read about ~80% of the book, first 60% and the last 20%, because my psychology can't bear reading the full book)

Now I'll enjoy my Jane Eyre, thank you