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Good reading practice and an interesting story
This was my first full book and it was a very good choice. I have not seen any of the film adaptations so went in completely blind, which worked out fine. The language and grammar is not too complex, and introduces a lot of useful vocabulary. There is some sci-fi vocab near the end which did make the last 40 pages more challenging. Sentence length is actually surprisingly long sometimes - at first I would get lost, but by the end I was able to understand them much better, so it's very good practice for comprehending longer sentences.
The story is great until the 2/3 mark, when the "big reveal" happens. Then it gets a bit weird and slightly disappointing, but actually in retrospect it wasn't so bad and the final few pages are somewhat redemptive of the weird twist. There are also a lot of long passages of back-and-forth interior monologue inside the protagonist's head, which does often slow down the pacing and make me think, "Why do I care about this?" I'm not well-versed enough in Japanese literature to know whether this is normal or just the author's writing style.
Some people have commented about the character acting archaically. I completely disagree, she was perfectly normal throughout. As soon as she thought, "What day is it?" but didn't turn to a mobile phone or television, I just assumed it was set several decades ago, and sure enough the story was published in 1967, but even if you don't notice this her actions and speech are in no way old-fashioned. The language is also not old, although some words are always spelled with kana for some reason (かの女 for 彼女, and たずねる for 尋ねる are the worst offenders) but this isn't a big deal.
The story is actually only 130 pages, there are three extra short stories at the back that I haven't read - 時の女神、姉弟 and きつね. I read the Tsubasa Bunko version which has furigana.