ALL THE LOVERS IN THE NIGHT - A BOOK REVIEW

The universe works in mysterious ways.

Five days ago, I found myself wandering through the aisles of the Oxford Bookstore in Darjeeling, running my fingers along spines, pausing at covers, and feeling that familiar flutter in my chest that only bookstores seem capable of producing. There is something magical about standing in a room full of worlds, hundreds of lives, thoughts, and stories waiting patiently for someone to step into them.

I moved from shelf to shelf, trying to decide which world I wanted to belong to next. That is when I stumbled upon 'Breasts and Eggs' by Meiko Kawakami. As I stood there reading the synopsis, a stranger walked up to me and suggested that I explore Kawakami's work.

"She's wonderful," they said.

So I did.

I picked up ‘Heaven’, then ‘All the Lovers in the Night.’ I read the blurbs, turned the books over in my hands, and tried to decide where to begin. ‘Breasts and Eggs’ felt like a commitment for another time, so I settled on the thinner one. Just a small introduction, I thought to myself. A way of seeing whether this writer and I would get along.

I left the bookstore with five books that day and a happiness that is difficult to explain. There is a particular comfort in knowing that when the real world becomes too loud, there are other worlds waiting for you on a shelf. Very ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig kind of a vibe, haha.

That evening, back at the homestay, surrounded by ferns and the misty hills of Darjeeling, I opened 'All the Lovers in the Night.'

Five pages in, I knew - not that I loved the book, I loved the main character - Fuyuko Irie.

Not in the usual way we grow attached to fictional characters. It felt more like meeting someone who, without intending to, reveals a part of themselves you thought only you carried. Something in her loneliness, her observations, and her careful way of moving through the world felt achingly familiar.

She not only reminded me of myself. But also, reminded me of the parts of myself I often forget to acknowledge.

And so, I followed her.

Through her long hours of proofreading. Through her solitary walks. Through quiet birthdays and familiar routines. Through the exhaustion of existing in a world that constantly asks you to explain yourself.

Kawakami writes loneliness in a way that feels startlingly honest. Not as isolation, but as something far more complex. The kind that lingers even when surrounded by people. The kind that follows you home after conversations have ended. The kind that hides beneath work, beneath distractions, beneath habits we develop simply to keep moving.

Because sometimes it is easier to stay busy than to listen to what is waiting inside us. And yet, no matter how carefully we avoid it, life finds its way back in.

Sometimes through conversations. Sometimes through a stranger. Or sometimes through a person who arrives quietly and changes the shape of your world without you noticing.

That is what Mitsutsuka felt like.

The conversations between him and Fuyuko became some of my favourite parts of the novel. Their discussions about light, both literal and metaphorical, are, oh my God, so beautiful, but what stayed with me most was something else entirely.

The silence.

The rare kind of silence that doesn't demand to be filled. The kind where someone's presence alone feels enough.

Kawakami understands something many writers miss: that intimacy is not always built through grand declarations. Sometimes it is built across a table. Between pauses. In the spaces between words. And perhaps that is what this book is really about. Not love in the conventional sense.

But the quiet, magical ways people alter us.

How a conversation can continue living inside you long after it has ended. How can someone leave and still remain? How you can find yourself standing in the same place, living the same life, and yet somehow seeing everything differently.

Life rarely changes all at once. Most of the time, it changes while we're busy looking elsewhere. And then one day, you pause. You look at yourself in the mirror and then look back and suddenly realize how much has happened.

This 220-page book took me on a journey that I know is only the beginning because I feel like I have just made a new friend; one whose work I already deeply admire and probably always will.

Meiko Kawakami took my hand and asked me to pause. To watch droplets fall onto the asphalt on a rainy afternoon. To walk home without an umbrella, drenched. To listen to the music playing softly through my earphones.

And, most importantly, to pay attention.

Having completed the book and now sitting here with it, I find myself thinking about fragments of memory, the strange distance that lies between what was and what is now.

Because life rarely announces itself while it is happening. It unfolds in ordinary moments that only become meaningful when we look back.

And perhaps that is what Meiko, through All the Lovers in the Night, gave me. A gentle nudge to pause long enough to notice Life as it is happening and to embrace who I am becoming along the way.