My first impressions of『ひと』

 


I've read the first chapter and would like to share a few thoughts in this post.

The first chapter introduces the protagonist, his difficult life situation, his past and several other characters. Apart from that, there are no special or dramatic events in this chapter. At this point, I'm not sure what this story is about or what to expect. I think this will change with the next chapter.

I like how the story is told. It starts with the focus on the protagonist and introduces gradually more and more details about the protagonist and other characters in a natural way. It’s quite pleasant to read so far. Although nothing special happened during this chapter, I never felt bored. It's interesting to learn more and more about the protagonist and I'm curious how his life will change in the next chapters. 

The level of difficulty is okay. I have to look up a bunch of words and don't understand every detail but most of the time I can follow the story well. Only scenes with descriptions of different kinds of meals and other cooking and work related things are quite difficult because of my lack of vocabulary in these areas. I have to google most of the described meals because I don't know them. 

Apart from that, I think this novel is not too hard to read so far. Compared to other novels, most sentences are surprisingly short. So even though there are words I don't know the sentences are not very complicated. This is a good balance.

These are my thoughts so far. I'm curious how the story will develop.

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