Book: No Longer Human
Author: Osamu Dazai
Reviewer’s Instagram: airam_reads
Photo Credit: airam_reads
Original Book Review
No longer human by Osamu Dazai
4 Stars
I was never able to connect or really sympathize with Yozo (main character) as he is literally the worst??? At the beginning when he was narrating his childhood I kind of thought he reminded me of Holden Caulfield from the Catcher in the Rye a bit, however, I’m a Holden Caulfield defender first and human being second and Holden was not the worst at all! Yozo is, though. He went through some really tough shit so I can’t blame him for being a little fucked up but he took it to another level, especially with his views on women. He also reminded me of the narrator of Diary of an Oxygen Thief, but Dazai is a much better writer. There was this “cathedrals of melancholy” passage that’s just stuck on my mind because I have never read those words put together before, and I think they sound gorgeous. I wasn’t expecting this to be a light or nice reading, just from the title alone, so maybe that’s why I’m not super surprised about the misogyny, but then again, I think that’s the point of this book, and the narrator himself says it so, he’s not a nice human being and he himself doesn’t even qualify himself as one. I always love to get in the minds of narrators like this one. It’s so entertaining! Also, I just think it was really funny how the epilogue plays out, because this is a semi autobiographical work, and I couldn’t help but laugh at Dazai justifying himself or calling himself an angel through the lense of other characters in the novel.
Have you read this one? What did you think?
