SOURCE: Lovell, Julia. “The Country's Cults.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5239 (29 August 2003): 21.

In the following review, Lovell complains that the narrative in Somersault is too formulaic and flat, asserting that Haruki Murakami's Underground offers a much more compelling portrayal of Japanese cults.

Only three contemporary Japanese novelists—Banana Yoshimoto, Haruki Murakami and Kenzaburo Oe—seem to get much attention in English translation; each has a few signature themes. Yoshimoto specializes in stories of female drifters, dysfunctional families and comfort food. No Murakami novel would be complete without alienated protagonists, alternative realities and spaghetti. Kenzaburo Oe's preoccupations and motifs, though more serious, have been equally recurrent: the nuclear threat, handicapped young men with a talent for musical composition (based on his own son Hikari), the spiritual condition of modern Japanese. Somersault, published in Japan earlier this year and Oe's first new novel since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature...