“Yet Kawakami is interested neither in demonstrating what makes people good nor in delighting in their antisocial perversities. Rather, her project is, like Nietzsche’s, a genealogical one. Her novels trace how terms of moral value evolve—how “good” and “evil,” or “pain” and “pleasure,” get affixed to ordinary interactions: becoming friends or becoming enemies, fighting or refusing to fight, falling in love or falling into indifference. Her plots offer not a moral education according to the precepts of God but an exploration of how our language of morality is grounded in the shifting power among human beings.” ~Merve Emre #bookstr nostr:note1le72yccd823uqyzctk89evehlhmmdah0a8rd7wd6umf96e7awjcqflnw0a
Discussion
Warning: This book is very graphic. If you read it, prepare yourself emotionally if needed. There is an extraordinary & chilling conversation between one of the bullied characters & another— who is not the main bully— but the “Nietzsche” of the physically and/or emotionally aggressive group. I would quote it— but somethings are better left in the context of the novel.