Love and Intimacy

Throughout the novel, the author explores the multivalent nature of love and intimacy through each of Nishino’s 10 relationships. The novel is organized into 10 chapters, each of which is written from the first person point of view of a woman who has fallen in love or been intimate with Nishino. By organizing the novel in this manner, the author is using her narrative form in order to enact the complexities of Nishino’s romantic history. Although Nishino himself confesses to being “a womanizer,” and frequently “two-timing,” each of his sexual and romantic partners is deeply attached to him (90, 135). Despite Nishino’s belief “that all girls are exactly the same,” he cannot break his romantic and sexual patterns (136). As the novel unfolds, shifting between 10 first person narrations and 10 discreet eras in time, the reader learns about the ways in which Nishino uses sex, love, and...