Strangers

I'm a bit torn, and no less so after seeing the recent film adaptation (after I finished the book). Yamada does a great job of setting up the story here; a middle-aged man lost after his marriage and family fizzle out once the kid moves out, burying himself in a job he's good but not great at, already being overtaken by a younger generation, suddenly finds himself both in a new relationship and strangely reconnecting to his dead parents.

What did it amount to, anyway, this life I led? Busying myself with random tasks that popped up one after another, enjoying the moments of excitement each little stir brought before it receded into the distance, yet accumulating no lasting store of wisdom from any of it. Each new day went by in much the same way. I never attained maturity, while I found myself growing ever more feeble with age.

There are parts of it that really work; Yamada getting into his narrator's head, forcing him to deal with the box he's built himself into; some really emotional moments with the parents; the gradual change in the character that we still notice even as he maintains he's the same old same old. But yeah, I mentioned fizzling out, and the book kinda does that, turning into a few too many ghost story clichés with no real pay-off as to why it should be a ghost story. Again, Haigh uses the ghost story to zoom out onto society, Yamada mostly drills down and finds... just a middle-aged man with middle-aged man problems.