Maya Garaway Week 2: No Longer Human Book Review

 Hi, if anyone has talked to me throughout the past two weeks, you have probably heard me talking about No Longer Human by Osuma Dazai. So, now it gets a book review!

While I was in Rhode Island, my roommate and friend recommended this book to me. Their exact words were “you have to read this book. I cried so much and wasn't able to finish the last chapter.” My friend lent me the book to read the first chapter and I was hooked. 

This book is a very interesting book and my friend's description turned out to be very accurate. I did manage to finish the entire book and honestly, if you are struggling with any mental health issues, you should be cautious about reading this book. It is semi-autobiographical and follows the story of the main character throughout his life. It is a story of loneliness. The prologue describes three different photographs of this person at different stages of his life and describes the person in an isolated manner. This person is the narrator and the photographs represent each chapter of the book. Throughout each chapter, the author describes his life's struggles and challenges, including connection to humans, mental health, and a few others. Not only is this explicit writing enough to make the reader pity the narrator, but the author also includes so many underlying meanings which make the story so much more personal and intimate if you understand. Even though it is a sad story, there is something very interesting and thought-provoking about this book. Personally, the first chapter stood out the most to me. I think it is because that is the chapter where I understood the underlying meaning in almost every paragraph. It's difficult to go into much detail without spoiling the book, but there are a few quotes that stood out to me. One of them is when the narrator  contemplates society and comes to this conclusion: “From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?” This quote was very thought-provoking to me, especially in the rest of this section of the book. It was one of those sections where you just have to sit and stare at a wall to think and process all of the information that you have just read. It challenges the way you think about the world around you. There are a few other quotes, but that would make me go over the word limit for this post, but this book had me in a state of contemplation of perspectives of the world. 

Are there any books you have read that have had a lasting impact on you?