Snow Country

Name: Snow Country
Author: Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata · 1947

A Tokyo man's obsession with a geisha in a mountain hot-spring town, told in fragments of pure sensation. Kawabata's haiku-like compression distills everything the Nobel committee meant when it cited his mastery of "the essentials of the Japanese mind" in 1968. Beauty shot through with melancholy; impermanence as the condition of all feeling.

The case against

on Shimamura’s detachment
“not defending Shimamura who comes across to me as a very entitled and negligent individual”
a book blog
on the missing dialogue tags
“This did lead it to be difficult to follow who was speaking admittedly.”
a Substack review
on the central relationship
“I found the contradictions in the relationship between Shimamura and Komoko very irritating”
a book blog
on the pacing
“The pacing in Snow Country can feel episodic.”
a Substack review