"The Passengers on the Hankyu Line" by Hiro Arikawa

Translated from Japanese into English by Allison Markin Powell. Another mixed feelings read for me this week. This is a fairly short work of fiction about a few passengers on a train. It's about how their lives briefly intersect and how that changes them. It reads like something right in between a slice of life novel and interconnected short stories. What I really liked about the book was its structure and general train ambiance. The way the text travels one way and then back again does exactly make you feel like you're making a round trip yourself. Very creative, very satisfying to read. I also liked how to character stories got woven into each other. Unfortunately, what I liked less were the characters' stories themselves. Every romantic plotline did not feel sweet to me. An adult man dating a high school girl. Two unexperienced youths explore love together, but we learn that the girl has been grimacing through all their sex activities until she received advice on how to experience…