夜行

This is a novel which consists of several seemingly-independent stories featuring each of the central cast of characters introduced within the story's 'frame'. Each story varies in setting, cast, and tone with only themes and an impactful painting being a common through-line at first glance. As with with any anthology-adjacent story, you'll like some stories better than others. That said, each one is at least enjoyable.

Compared to other novels I've read, this one features more descriptive and sometimes poetic language, which was a welcome feature that added to the tone. In terms of language learning, I'd say that the challenge you'll encounter have to do with the real-life location names being plentiful. Unless you're already familiar with the areas involved, you're likely to find you eyes glazing over so-and-so station. It doesn't really much affect your enjoyment. A second aspect is that since it is broken up into various sub-stories, each story will feature an almost unique cast of characters. I took to making notes when encountering a new character which consisted of essentially listing the name in kanji, its furigana reading, and a quick note as to who the person was which became more helpful in tracking the characters common to each story. As an example: 増田（ますだ）ー＞ older coworker