This was a very powerful book that, unfortunately, lost some of its appeal because it is written in third person plural. Instead of experiencing one or two specific women's lives throughout the novel, the reader experiences every woman's life in snippets. To me, it read like a magazine article and I wished it was about one or two women. I will be reading Otsuka's other novel, though, because I believe that is written from one woman's point of view. I'm very interested in this subject now, but I just wish this novel satisfied my curiosity a bit more!