Winter Sleep

I was fascinated with this book, as I was with ASHES. Each took me into the life and thoughts of someone I would never expect to identify with, and I was completely absorbed. I appreciated sharing the most mundane moments in first person with the principal character, as well as his high and low moments. In a way that Takeshi Kitano did with his early gangster films, I felt that I had been given an important insight into what it could really be like to be an artist. The characters were very interesting and complex, each with a mysterious history, and their interactions were highly unexpected right to the end. The plot moved forward in a logical manner, and the ending was satisfying, something I can't say for many Japanese novels I have read. Kitaka seems to be known as a crime writer, but crime didn't seem to be the main emphasis here. A good book!