I could only audibly say out loud once I was done what a weird book”

I was drawn in my the premise on the back cover, which remains a really compelling story idea I want to see fully fleshed out. In the end, what the finished book felt like was some mix of experimental storytelling styles and poetry and short stories that didn’t fit into a cohesive narrative. The ending makes clear that was at least somewhat intended, and perhaps how it was translated exacerbated that, but I definitely didn’t crack open the book expecting that so it felt like a lot of whiplash. 

I persisted in reading because indeed some of the sections gave really interesting worms of ideas about the nature of time, memory, the past, and how different regions of cultures think about them all. But I just wish those could have been nearly woven into the narrative that was initially teased.