Hello.
I’m MoriKei.

I read ‘Breakup’ by Haruka Tono.
This book is also the winner of the Akutagawa Prize in 2020.

It was a pretty good book, so I’d like to write my impressions.

First of all, the overall impression I got was ‘like a novel by Haruki Murakami’.
Maybe it was because the protagonist seemed to be looking at himself objectively.

The story is about an elite college student who is ruined by two women.
The male protagonist has a strange way of thinking.

As I mentioned earlier, he looks at himself objectively, and he doesn’t really look at things emotionally, but follows the rules he has decided are right.

This makes him look like a hollow and empty person.
He plays the role of a model citizen who follows the rules of society, but he is very hypocritical and self-righteous.
He lives with the consciousness that ‘I am a model citizen, so I have to follow the rules of society’, but in reality he is a man with nothing inside.

However, this protagonist cannot resist his sexual desire.
As a result, he is tossed around by two women and heads for a ‘breakup’.

The woman he was originally dating, Maiko, seemed to be a hollow woman who thinks logically (in her own way) like the protagonist. She is a woman who doesn’t forget to maneuver well for her own advantage.

The woman who appears in the beginning of the story, Akari, is a type of woman who moves with emotions that the protagonist lacks. She may seem unbalanced, but this woman has a strong sexual desire, and the protagonist switches to her to satisfy his own sexual desire.

By switching to her, who doesn’t follow his own rules, the gears that had been meshing until then go crazy and he rushes to a breakup.

The characters think selfishly, so some people may feel ‘I don’t like this’ when reading it, but I think this is a book that can make you feel an ‘overwhelming emptiness’ that is not found in other books.

It may seem boring at first, but I was gradually drawn into it.

I want to read other books by this author.

Personally, I recommend this book.