Pink & Gray review (spoiler free)
My personal Pink & Gray review
SPOILER FREE
I keep procrastinating to write my comment for Pink & Gray...let's try this out.
First of all, I have no idea how to write a good review for a book, my main aim is to be the most objective I can, for once. I'm a big reader and I've got a degree in Japanese literature so I'll try to ignore the fact that my ultimate bias wrote it.
"Pink & Gray" is good book. Wow, that is a pro's comment lol.
More seriously, according to me it has all the characteristics that a good book needs to have: legibility, well-analyzed and lovable characters, a coherent and nice story, it has to keep high the interest and involve emotionally the reader.
It is readable, it's not the first Japanese book that I read but it didn't cost me big efforts to understand it. Sometimes the words used are a little peculiar, as expected from a literary work anyway, but the phrases goes smooth and are never too difficult to decode. The descriptions are never boring and in general talking it's really enjoyable to read. The trickiest but also most interesting aspect is that the plot is not in chronological order, in the first half of the book each chapter is a mix of events of the present and the past. Sometimes the change of time is clearly expressed but sometimes you need few seconds to understand when something happened. It makes the reading active and funny though, sometimes I had to go back to some episode to understand it better or find the link between past and present. I thought it was really smart, especially because in the end all the dots connect perfectly, so much that it's a real surprise.
Another interesting and unexpected expedient is that at the beginning the narrator Daiki addresses to the readers saying that he's the author of the book. During the reading you kind of forget about that, but in the second half of the book it turns into a "metastory" where Daiki, writer of the novel, is involved in the realization of the movie inspired to it. This may sound confusing but it was another good way to make the reader excited until the end. And by the way, I can't help but thinking that if "Pink & Gray" will ever get to be turned in a movie it will be quite amusing, a movie about a book about a movie about a book!
All the characters in the novel are lovely, let me say this. The two main ones, Daiki and Shingo, are the symbol of male friendship, which according to me is sometimes quite extreme and hard to understand for a girl. Anyway, they are simply adorable, the first half of the novel is full of episodes of their youth. These episodes are all sweet and nostalgic, after just few pages you are completely attached to them two. Sometimes reading those youth friendship stories honestly I thought they were kind of excessive, a little too sentimental for two boys of 7-8 years. This too has its explanation though, the narrator is 25 years-Daiki and as he says himself "Sooner or later all the past becomes more beautiful than it was". During the reading you get to know their characters, approve or frown upon their behavior, cheer for them, get moved over their story and most of all, their complicated feelings. I think that this was the real biggest quality of "Pink & Gray", the description of the humanity of its characters. The minds and hearts of Shingo and Daiki are studied and analyzed deep inside, you may not agree with all they think and do but surely you can understand their reasons. If you can't it's only because you didn't arrive to the right part yet, because in the end everything is explained in details.
I also think that the promoters of the novel did a great job not spoiling the plot focusing on a single aspect of the story. For the whole time we heard talking about "the double path of success and failure in the show business world" and the "loyalty and envy of the unsuccessful guy", but I had the feeling that this was just the setting, the surface, of the story, not the story itself. Because nothing of this would have had sense without their particular characters and the nature of Daiki and Shingo's friendship. Daiki feels like that towards Shingo's career for real but it's only a part of their complicated relationship, Shingo himself is not simply an egoist who cares only about his job, quite the opposite instead. It's difficult to explain but, as also Shige said, everything is perfectly understandable reading the book.
Other characters worth a mention, the girls Yui, Ishikawa and Karin are very relevant for the story and they're good characters too. I loved how all them are strong, self-confident young women, in opposition to the guys who are kind of weak, indecisive and, most of all, blinded by their pride and personal issues.
Said all this, I guess you already understood that the plot is indeed good and coherent and it does keep high the attention and the suspense. I like to enjoy books slowly but this time I couldn't, because once you get into "Pink & Gray"'s story you can hardly put the book down. The first half is extremely cute but at the same time it's teasing because it makes you wonder what in the world ruined this life-long friendship. So you go on and in the very middle of the book something very shocking happens and then you're just forced to read to the end.
Talking about the end, it's pretty shocking too. Before reading the last chapter I tried to think by myself how I would have ended it, I came to the solution that there was only one thing that would have been "right", meaningful and coherent to the whole book. It's a painful choice though and I wasn't sure that Shige, with his background of idol and his audience of girl fans, would have gone for it. In this way he surprised me twice. Firstly when I read the end of the novel and I found out he chose that ending, of course I honestly had no idea how it would have happened but the final result was the same. Then I've been pleasantly surprised when yesterday during the radio show he said that he did my same reasoning: he was afraid of using that ending but he knew that nothing else would have been satisfying as it.
Anyway the whole book is surprising and interesting, I've never ever been able to predict what was going to happen.
On the emotional level, what can I say? I was so involved that even when I wasn't reading it I kept thinking about Daiki and Gocchi (but maybe this was fault of my obsession with Shige, I cannot deny that XD). During certain parts I was shocked for real. I cried from time to time but most of all I felt distressed, stomach-turned all the time. The last chapter was really painful but once you've finished reading you feel absolutely satisfied by the novel.
I know I've written way too much already and I'm sure there are many things I wanted to say and forgot.
Let me go on some more, I'd like now to connect the book to Shige.
These words from me may seem useless and predictable but really, I'm so proud of him.
It's easy to attack his book from many aspects, and I'm sure that many people did. But now that I read myself the book I'm glad to say with all my confidence that the book fights itself all the possible criticism. It's well-written, structured, interesting and moving, I tried to think to some negative things but I really can't, and not because Shige is the writer.
About the possible hints to Shige and NEWS, I think there's none. Shige is absolutely right when he says that the two main characters are both him, because some sides of their personality are very similar to Shige's, but still Daiki and Shingo are not Shige. Their story is completely different to his, there are common points, that's sure, but their past and what happens is way too painful and extreme, I really don't think that Shige lived something like that. This also puts away all the implications about Yamapi or the situation in NEWS, I couldn't find anything related to that at all.
To end there was a line in the last pages of the book that made me startle, because I think that somehow they describe "Pink & Gray" perfectly:
"Somehow it was sweet, brilliant, sublime, hypnotic and beautiful, and then, kind of cruel..."
I think that's all, I'll be happy if some of you get to the end of this long post XD
Sorry if I've been too wordy and specialized, I guess it won't be interesting for many people, but I wanted to write a real review about it besides saying that Shige is a genius, talented and that I respect him a lot (also because I say this all the times!).
Now, I made this review spoiler free but I'm sure many of you who won't get to read the book any soon want to know the plot. I wrote a quite detailed resume of it, it's HERE.
Notice, read the plot only if you're sure you want to know the whole story, the post will be locked in 3 days.
SPOILER FREE
I keep procrastinating to write my comment for Pink & Gray...let's try this out.
First of all, I have no idea how to write a good review for a book, my main aim is to be the most objective I can, for once. I'm a big reader and I've got a degree in Japanese literature so I'll try to ignore the fact that my ultimate bias wrote it.
"Pink & Gray" is good book. Wow, that is a pro's comment lol.
More seriously, according to me it has all the characteristics that a good book needs to have: legibility, well-analyzed and lovable characters, a coherent and nice story, it has to keep high the interest and involve emotionally the reader.
It is readable, it's not the first Japanese book that I read but it didn't cost me big efforts to understand it. Sometimes the words used are a little peculiar, as expected from a literary work anyway, but the phrases goes smooth and are never too difficult to decode. The descriptions are never boring and in general talking it's really enjoyable to read. The trickiest but also most interesting aspect is that the plot is not in chronological order, in the first half of the book each chapter is a mix of events of the present and the past. Sometimes the change of time is clearly expressed but sometimes you need few seconds to understand when something happened. It makes the reading active and funny though, sometimes I had to go back to some episode to understand it better or find the link between past and present. I thought it was really smart, especially because in the end all the dots connect perfectly, so much that it's a real surprise.
Another interesting and unexpected expedient is that at the beginning the narrator Daiki addresses to the readers saying that he's the author of the book. During the reading you kind of forget about that, but in the second half of the book it turns into a "metastory" where Daiki, writer of the novel, is involved in the realization of the movie inspired to it. This may sound confusing but it was another good way to make the reader excited until the end. And by the way, I can't help but thinking that if "Pink & Gray" will ever get to be turned in a movie it will be quite amusing, a movie about a book about a movie about a book!
All the characters in the novel are lovely, let me say this. The two main ones, Daiki and Shingo, are the symbol of male friendship, which according to me is sometimes quite extreme and hard to understand for a girl. Anyway, they are simply adorable, the first half of the novel is full of episodes of their youth. These episodes are all sweet and nostalgic, after just few pages you are completely attached to them two. Sometimes reading those youth friendship stories honestly I thought they were kind of excessive, a little too sentimental for two boys of 7-8 years. This too has its explanation though, the narrator is 25 years-Daiki and as he says himself "Sooner or later all the past becomes more beautiful than it was". During the reading you get to know their characters, approve or frown upon their behavior, cheer for them, get moved over their story and most of all, their complicated feelings. I think that this was the real biggest quality of "Pink & Gray", the description of the humanity of its characters. The minds and hearts of Shingo and Daiki are studied and analyzed deep inside, you may not agree with all they think and do but surely you can understand their reasons. If you can't it's only because you didn't arrive to the right part yet, because in the end everything is explained in details.
I also think that the promoters of the novel did a great job not spoiling the plot focusing on a single aspect of the story. For the whole time we heard talking about "the double path of success and failure in the show business world" and the "loyalty and envy of the unsuccessful guy", but I had the feeling that this was just the setting, the surface, of the story, not the story itself. Because nothing of this would have had sense without their particular characters and the nature of Daiki and Shingo's friendship. Daiki feels like that towards Shingo's career for real but it's only a part of their complicated relationship, Shingo himself is not simply an egoist who cares only about his job, quite the opposite instead. It's difficult to explain but, as also Shige said, everything is perfectly understandable reading the book.
Other characters worth a mention, the girls Yui, Ishikawa and Karin are very relevant for the story and they're good characters too. I loved how all them are strong, self-confident young women, in opposition to the guys who are kind of weak, indecisive and, most of all, blinded by their pride and personal issues.
Said all this, I guess you already understood that the plot is indeed good and coherent and it does keep high the attention and the suspense. I like to enjoy books slowly but this time I couldn't, because once you get into "Pink & Gray"'s story you can hardly put the book down. The first half is extremely cute but at the same time it's teasing because it makes you wonder what in the world ruined this life-long friendship. So you go on and in the very middle of the book something very shocking happens and then you're just forced to read to the end.
Talking about the end, it's pretty shocking too. Before reading the last chapter I tried to think by myself how I would have ended it, I came to the solution that there was only one thing that would have been "right", meaningful and coherent to the whole book. It's a painful choice though and I wasn't sure that Shige, with his background of idol and his audience of girl fans, would have gone for it. In this way he surprised me twice. Firstly when I read the end of the novel and I found out he chose that ending, of course I honestly had no idea how it would have happened but the final result was the same. Then I've been pleasantly surprised when yesterday during the radio show he said that he did my same reasoning: he was afraid of using that ending but he knew that nothing else would have been satisfying as it.
Anyway the whole book is surprising and interesting, I've never ever been able to predict what was going to happen.
On the emotional level, what can I say? I was so involved that even when I wasn't reading it I kept thinking about Daiki and Gocchi (but maybe this was fault of my obsession with Shige, I cannot deny that XD). During certain parts I was shocked for real. I cried from time to time but most of all I felt distressed, stomach-turned all the time. The last chapter was really painful but once you've finished reading you feel absolutely satisfied by the novel.
I know I've written way too much already and I'm sure there are many things I wanted to say and forgot.
Let me go on some more, I'd like now to connect the book to Shige.
These words from me may seem useless and predictable but really, I'm so proud of him.
It's easy to attack his book from many aspects, and I'm sure that many people did. But now that I read myself the book I'm glad to say with all my confidence that the book fights itself all the possible criticism. It's well-written, structured, interesting and moving, I tried to think to some negative things but I really can't, and not because Shige is the writer.
About the possible hints to Shige and NEWS, I think there's none. Shige is absolutely right when he says that the two main characters are both him, because some sides of their personality are very similar to Shige's, but still Daiki and Shingo are not Shige. Their story is completely different to his, there are common points, that's sure, but their past and what happens is way too painful and extreme, I really don't think that Shige lived something like that. This also puts away all the implications about Yamapi or the situation in NEWS, I couldn't find anything related to that at all.
To end there was a line in the last pages of the book that made me startle, because I think that somehow they describe "Pink & Gray" perfectly:
"Somehow it was sweet, brilliant, sublime, hypnotic and beautiful, and then, kind of cruel..."
I think that's all, I'll be happy if some of you get to the end of this long post XD
Sorry if I've been too wordy and specialized, I guess it won't be interesting for many people, but I wanted to write a real review about it besides saying that Shige is a genius, talented and that I respect him a lot (also because I say this all the times!).
Now, I made this review spoiler free but I'm sure many of you who won't get to read the book any soon want to know the plot. I wrote a quite detailed resume of it, it's HERE.
Notice, read the plot only if you're sure you want to know the whole story, the post will be locked in 3 days.