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A review by peripetia
The Night Parade: A Speculative Memoir by Jami Nakamura Lin
Did not finish book. Stopped at 25%.
I'm finding myself unable to get into this, so I'm dnf'ing it. I'm not sure how far along I am (I've been listening to the audiobook), but I'm at chapter 5 out of 21, so I assume around 25%.
I think first and foremost this memoir is just not my cup of tea and I'm also thinking that in this case the audiobook format was not the best choice. I could try the e-book but I don't really want to.
The concept of this memoir is to somehow weave together Japanese folklore and the author's own life, which I don't think is done successfully. In every other chapter she writes about folklore in a semi-academic way, citing Western scholars, and every other chapter she writes about her own life. Since the folklore was not, in my opinion, tied in successfully with the stories about her life, the memoir is disjointed. She explores Japanese, Okinawan, and Taiwanese stories from an outsider's perspective, which I also did not warm up to.
She mentions Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House and probably tried to do something similar, but again in my opinion did not succeed.
Finally, I was expecting a memoir dealing mainly with her bipolar disorder but it just doesn't, unless you want to interpret things heavily yourself without the author offering any analysis. I was not a fan of the writing style either. Could be that it didn't work well in audio, especially the "listen - the penny drops; see - the waves hit the shore; remember - I was happy then" (these are my made up examples but I hope you get what I mean). I suppose the writing was supposed to be lyrical but somehow it just sounded whiny and immature to me.
I think first and foremost this memoir is just not my cup of tea and I'm also thinking that in this case the audiobook format was not the best choice. I could try the e-book but I don't really want to.
The concept of this memoir is to somehow weave together Japanese folklore and the author's own life, which I don't think is done successfully. In every other chapter she writes about folklore in a semi-academic way, citing Western scholars, and every other chapter she writes about her own life. Since the folklore was not, in my opinion, tied in successfully with the stories about her life, the memoir is disjointed. She explores Japanese, Okinawan, and Taiwanese stories from an outsider's perspective, which I also did not warm up to.
She mentions Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House and probably tried to do something similar, but again in my opinion did not succeed.
Finally, I was expecting a memoir dealing mainly with her bipolar disorder but it just doesn't, unless you want to interpret things heavily yourself without the author offering any analysis. I was not a fan of the writing style either. Could be that it didn't work well in audio, especially the "listen - the penny drops; see - the waves hit the shore; remember - I was happy then" (these are my made up examples but I hope you get what I mean). I suppose the writing was supposed to be lyrical but somehow it just sounded whiny and immature to me.