The Pear Book

“The humans kept doing the same things; loving one another, hating one another fighting one another… You’d think they’d come up with something else to try…”

In the far distant future, almost too distant to comprehend, humans are on the verge of extinction and have broken up into small groups across the planet, under the watchful eye of the mysterious, yet oddly trustworthy, Mothers.

Despite this world being so far from the present day, and the remains of humanity being largely biologically different from us, one of the best elements of this masterful novel by the remarkable Hiromi Kawakami is the idea that humans will always be humans. We will always love, always hate, always fight – we are predictable, no matter the setting.

There are many ‘full-circle’ moments in this collection of stories from an array of different lives in this dystopian, yet frighteningly real, world. At multiple points the story and the characters find themselves reverting back to the ideals and philosophies that we live and work by today. This proves that, no matter how long humanity will live, we are creatures of habit and some things will always remain the same.

Another fascinating element is the outside perspective this novel provides on our current way of life. For example, one character seems to be completely dumbfounded by the fact that humans used to go to war, and would die out of pain or illness. This is a fact that is so embedded into us, so by reading how unusual this sounds to someone who is not from our time, Kawakami really makes you think about the world and societies we have built for ourselves, and all the atrocities that come with it.

This is an extremely thought-provoking book with some charming and eccentric characters that you can easily align yourself with as a reader. This is a stand-out book of the year, and it’s only February as of writing this review.