DNF, wasn't my type of story. Nothing against the author it just wasn't what I love to read. I made it about 50% through which is why I feel comfortable to rate it. The story was interesting it just didn't keep me hooked.

5/5 Stars

I'm a big fan of Japanese Literature.
& this hit the spot. With it's lyrical writing style and the wonderful world building this is a must.

This is a great novel! Definitely had a lot of fun with the characters, and provides a lot of context for The Tatami Galaxy anime series which recently released here in the west.

The writing was decent however I wasn’t very impressed with the story. It didn’t keep my interest and seemed repetitive.

I really, really enjoyed this book! It was funny and bizarre, I have not watched the anime yet but I hope to get to it. This book was unique and the message of the book was very heartwarming and makes you think about life. Even though things happen that can be miserable no matter how many times you can try change you are still the same person. I highly recommend this book for fans of multiple universes. The story does take awhile to build up but I feel like that is the point. Cannot wait to read more by Morimi.

This book was absolutely fantastic. I've already added it to our list for order next year and will recommend it to students.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.

Overall Rating: 3.50

The story revolves around a college student who is dissatisfied with his life and gets involved in four different clubs: a film club, a softball club, an underground club, and a mysterious club with strict rules. The problem is that these club events keep happening again and again, which made the story feel repetitive.

While there were some differences between each club's storyline, the recurring nature of the events made the overall narrative monotonous and, ultimately, boring. I understand that the author may have used similar moments and dialogue for humor, but it didn't manage to hold my interest.

There were parts in the book that were humorous and made me chuckle but overall it was a bit repetitive and confusing.

I should know by now to accept that Japanese speculative fiction of this type is not for me. I watch the movies based on the novels and get really excited but - please don't kill me - reading the books is torture.
This particular book focuses on an unnamed college junior who believes he's wasting the years he's supposed to be living in rosy happiness all because he made a wrong choice in which social club to join during freshman year. He meets a fellow slacker whom he blames for all his woes despite him being his only friend. We then follow this student through the different timelines where he chose the different paths available to him as a freshman to see how his life would have changed... only things don't really change that much and it's entirely possible that all paths lead to the same place simply because our protagonist is the way he is.
The writing is actually pretty solid, which is good because entire passages get the copy/paste treatment and are repeated over and over again. Experiencing the character's deja vu without the character being aware that it's deja vu because they're reliving an alternate timeline created by a choice makes for a bizarre and (honestly) boring reading experience.
And then there's the fact that the unnamed main character is supposed to not be entirely likable and you've got a book that challenges the reader way more than I'm willing to dedicate to novels I read for pleasure.
I've learned my lesson. No more Japanese speculative fiction for me.

Thankful to NetGalley and HarperVia for the reading experience.

I expected to like this much more than I did. It was okay enough, but I definitely struggled trying to finish it--it just didn't capture and keep my interest long enough for me to invest myself in the plot or the characters. I'll watch the anime, but I won't return to try this one again more than likely.

I am a huge fan of certain narratives from countries that tend to tell different stories than the tired tropes and structures of our western sensibilities. When artists can experiment with new structures and forms, I find that I gain a lot of insight as a writer into how to add new scope and sequence to my own work. Murakami is a master at this, engaging and fun with a splash of pop culture and a structure that sometimes makes no sense until the end when it becomes clear what his goals were in the story itself. Same goes for Ghibli films, in fact, the term ‘spirited away’ even shows up in this text. It becomes easy to consume Japanese art to awaken to the off-kilter world of another culture with a completely new way to approach a story. 

I picked up an ARC of Tatami Galaxy by Tomihiko Morimi without knowing anything about it – and about three-quarters of the way through I found out that it was based on a relatively popular anime series that this was a novelization of, which made me realize that this could go either way. I must admit, I enjoyed reading it, but the big conceit wasn’t entirely clear until three-quarters of the way, and it seemed haphazardly thrown into a narrative t hat confusingly used episodic repetition as a conceit throughout. There, a strange tesseract-ish system is uncovered in the center in eighty days of the mundane early college life of our nameless, bearded protagonist that is almost an excuse for all the repetition. Not quite Interstellar, not quite Memento, not quite House of Leaves, this left a lot to be desired and almost felt like it was written first with the need to go back and fill in the blanks. Those blanks were filled in with some school-age nonsense that would have been fine on its own were it not for the repetition that made me confused about whether I was making any progress (and reading it on my kindle as opposed to a physical copy somehow made that confusion worse). This confusion wasn’t charming or felt like it had a purpose, but just served as a gatekeeper for the real point, here. It isn’t a slice of life entirely, it isn’t science fiction entirely, it had some boisterous lines that didn’t earn their merit, and overall, it was bleh. I can see what it could have been, and perhaps that’s where the disappointment was. Was it because of the translation? Maybe the story could be redeemed in the original execution... 

So, I decided I would take the BluRays out of the library to see how that went – maybe it just didn’t translate from the screen to the page (and why would it?). I also took out another box set of another one I was dragging my feet on, Social Experiments Lain. This may have colored my opinion overall, so take it for what it is. 

I thought the film version of the story to be a lot easier to follow in the scope of the type of story it is. Rather than thinking I was accidentally rereading portions of the book that I had already drunkenly read, then missed, and then forgot about for some reason, the visual aspect of the story made for a much more reasonable representation of the repetition of the story that put a lot less on the reader to figure out what is going on. A splash of color here, some psychedelic animation there, and all of a sudden, the dialogue isn’t so much driving a repetitive and misleading paragraph. The story is much more suited to the visual language of film and animation, and in a way, is best preserved in that format under the talented hands of the producers of the original program.  

The book kept my attention, but the television series engaged me. It may have been the execution, it may have been the translation, whatever the case, it makes for a better work of art in its original format. Perhaps it should have stayed that way - as the text so eloquently puts it, “...you probably don’t want to pour your time down the drain reading such detestable drivel, anyhow.” 

-----UPDATE 2/10/23-----

I had a great online conversation with the translator of the novel, which already requires several updates to the review I posted - and some of my comments and observations were pretty off. First, the novel predated the television show by quite some time (I immediately went to Wikipedia and realized what a mistake that was) and it was just a matter of the wording of some of the pre-release copy I read that somehow convinced me it was the other way around. The other interesting aspect of the conversation was how accurately (and difficult the process of) the translation was interpreted. The translator insisted that they had worked really hard on translating a relatively repetitive and spiraling original text - and yes, the episodic nature and wording of the repetitive portions make for a text that is what it is, a challengingly repetitive and episodic novel. My review remains the same in terms of my opinion, but I wanted to clarify that I was definitely wrong on the order of production and the translator maybe being at fault for what was essentially a word-for-word and paragraph-for-paragraph repetitive novel that they translated almost as-is that kept these elements that I didn't think work editorially in tact.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review~

The Tatami Galaxy follows our protagonist as he's on the brink of failing out of the prestigious Kyoto University after deciding to befriend the creepy Ozu. Thanks to Ozu he's no longer a member of the film club, public enemy number one of the club's president, and unsure if he'll ever be able to romance one of the club members, Akashi. After a run-in with a self proclaimed god, our protagonist will be given the chance to start over again and again as he rewinds time and hops timelines.

The book is broken up into four parts: the first being the main timeline and the other three being other ones. I really liked the premise of the story, but our protagonist is kind of the worst. Even Ozu seems to have more of a personality. He does get better as time goes on, but I didn't even want to cheer him on from the first 25% of the book because of his actions. The plus side is the other characters allow you to continue to dive into the story. I very much like how they ended this, how no matter what you think you've done to make your life the way it is, you would have always been the same you. Whether you want to take that in a good or bad light, truly is up to the eye of the reader.

nice one. expected it to be so much more though; the premise promises so much but the book gives too little.

- thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the free e-ARC.

I did not enjoy this like I thought and hoped I was. I had never seen the anime before so this was a completely new story to me. I've seen other reviewers say the anime is much better than the book so I might give it a shot. I thought the main character was so unlikable and it made reading and caring about the story very hard. I went into this with an open mind and zero expectations and was somehow still let down. There were definitely some moments I found myself interested in, but those were few and far between.

Tatami Galaxy is a very creative (if sometimes intentionally repetitive) take on the multiverse story, exploring the many ways a college junior's life would be the same or different based on which of 4 clubs he chooses to join at the start of his freshman year.

In separate quarters of book, our narrator chooses either a film club, being the disciple of a weird older man, a softball team, or a secret society. In each, he is tormented by his frenemy Ozu, lusts after a woman or two, and has various run-ins with flooding, fortunetelling, moth swarming, and college social politics. He is always extremely shy and hyperaware of a sense of duty and withdrawal that hinders connections to others.

The last part is especially mysterious and expands the "galaxy" part in a very creative way. This is a great thought experiment on how you can't really escape yourself and some circumstances, but where you can make some meaningful changes and hopefully break the pattern when you find opportunities and seize them.

I have no clue how to review this book. I will start by saying that I had seen the Anime adaptation of this book a while back so I wasn't completely unfamiliar with the story before picking up the book. I was STILL confused by the story lol. This is a Groundhog's-Day-type story where there is a repetition of the same events in different contexts. I do think there were moments where I could see this could be genius, but I do think the translation was a problem. There were a LOT of moments where I was just confused by the language choice or the sentence structure. It felt like a translator trying too hard to be faithful to the original text rather than contextualizing it. There was also the fact that I'm a woman and reading from the perspective of a, frankly, unlikable college boy (with paragraphs devoted to talking to his penis and all) is just not my jam. I wish I could give it a glowing review, and I do feel that if I had a way to read the original Japanese this could have been a higher rated book, but as it stands, I'm just luke warm on it.

I really enjoyed reading this! I was not familiar with the anime, so the story was new to me. I did find the characters to be unlikable, however I believe that added to the reading experience. This was my first book that explored parallel universes and i loved it! I would recommend this to anyone looking for a fun, lighthearted read!

A terrifically weird and unique piece of translated fiction.

This is a unique spin on my beloved campus novel subgenre, and it does an excellent job of blending literary humor with typical campus novel fodder.

It’s an odd blend of fantasy and reality that somehow works well together, peppered with exceptionally good humor and insight. It almost feels like a semi-absurdist satire of the typical “trying to find a way to fit in and thrive” trope common to campus fiction.

I loved the characters in this (even the ones I also kind of hated), and the humor is extremely good.

A tip of the cap to the translator, who did an outstanding job preserving both the humor of the writing as well as the subtlety of it, no small feat when working a novel into a second language.

"Tatami Galaxy" is an offbeat book that explores the concept of parallel universes and the idea of "what if" we had made different decisions in life. The book examines this idea through the lens of the anime adaptation, which adds to its strange and unique nature. While the concept of the book is interesting, the execution left something to be desired. The stories tended to drag on with too many details, making it difficult to know what to focus on. Additionally, the unnamed protagonist's goals were unclear and the plot was hard to follow, making it hard to stay engaged with the book. In comparison, I found "The Midnight Library" to be a much better read.

Despite its flaws, "Tatami Galaxy" does make an interesting point about our regrets and how we might achieve similar outcomes regardless of the choices we make. This message can be somewhat depressing for those who enjoy thinking about different outcomes, as it suggests that such questions may be pointless.

I've heard that the anime adaptation of "Tatami Galaxy" is better, but I have never watched it myself. It's possible that the visual elements of the show might help to clarify some of the confusing aspects of the book. Overall, I'm not sure if I liked "Tatami Galaxy" or not. It may be better suited for a younger audience, particularly those in college who can relate to the protagonist's experiences with choosing different clubs to join.

This is a book that I appreciated for the premise, but the execution was a bit hit and miss for me. The main character is an aimless college student in Kyoto who holds to the idea that he’s a great guy who threw away the last two years of his life because of bad influences and a series of decisions that took him further and further away from that ideal “good person” ideology. He has all of these ideas about who he should be and what he should have, but he doesn’t take much of the responsibility for what he has ended up with.

He’s given a chance to relive that stretch of his life and see where he would have ended up with different decisions being made. I enjoyed the time manipulation aspect to the book, as well as some of the surreal and absurd experiences he has as he’s making more and more questionable decisions. The repetition of descriptions became a bit of a slog, though, and I felt like much of the book could have been paced a bit more consistently.

Overall I think there are some powerful themes to the book, but it isn’t one I would plan to read again.

First published in Japan in 2008; published in translation by HarperVia on December 6, 2022

This thoroughly odd novel was apparently a hit in Japan, where it was adapted as an anime television miniseries (because Japan). I watched the trailer on YouTube and it’s, um, colorful? Anime rarely speaks to me, but different strokes.

The book was apparently followed by a “spiritual successor” and an actual sequel. The sequel also became an anime miniseries in Japan that has apparently been released in the US on Disney+ or Hulu. (I glean this information from Wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt.) The sequel (Tatami Time Machine) will be published in translation in 2023. I think I’ll give it a pass.

The novel is set in four parallel universes. It tells, at times, a somewhat interesting story. It is typical in a novel of this sort to illustrate how a life might be different if a person makes different choices. Tomihiko Morimi eschews the typical by imaging a character who makes similar mistakes and encounters similar misery in every life he lives. The story is, at times, so absurdist or surreal that it might have been inspired by Borges.

The unnamed narrator is a college student who, in each universe, is beginning his junior year, having accomplished nothing during his first two years. He is pretty much the same guy in each reality. He consistently lives in a four-and-a-half tatami room and he always has a porn collection. Ozu is always his friend and a man Ozu calls “Master” always lives above him. He always reads Jules Verne. Some passages, including his description of the regret he feels for wasting his first two years at the university, are repeated verbatim in each section.

The stories diverge in other details. In each universe, he flashes back to his first year in college, when he examined flyers for student clubs and, although they all seemed “pretty shady,” chose one he would later abandon. He makes a different choice in each universe. The first is a film club called Ablutions. In the second universe, he becomes a disciple of Master Higuchi (although for two years, the narrator is not sure what kind of disciple he was). The third is the Mellow Softball Club. In the last universe, the narrator joins an underground organization, Lucky Cat Chinese Food, and more particularly, the Library Police, a suborganization that has taken on the life of an intelligent organization.

The narrator sees the clubs as opportunities to expand his nonexistent social contacts. The narrator has limited social skills, which might explain why he ends up making friends only with Ozu, a troublemaker who might or might not be a good companion. In the third universe, he practices conversation with Ozu’s love doll; in the fourth, a plot is afoot to kidnap the doll. In the first, the narrator calls himself the Obstructor of Romance because of his unsuccessful love life. A mysterious fellow “who dared call himself a god” is apparently trying to decide whether to play cupid with the narrator or his friend Ozu. The god is not clear that either of them are worthy of Akashi, a judgmental engineering student who (in some universes, at least) makes a “positive impression” on the narrator.

The god tells the narrator that he ties and unties the red threads of destiny each year. That’s quite a job, but the god seems to tie and untie them in nearly the same way in each universe. While the details vary, the narrator’s life always begins with hope and seems to end with a feeling of lost opportunities. In repeated universes, a fortune teller advises the narrator to seize chances. He finds it difficult to heed that advice. He knows he should ditch Ozu, who is something of an albatross, and pursue paths to happiness — perhaps Akashi — but the narrator is incapable of overcoming his social ineptness. Even moths are better at socializing than the narrator.

The last section creates a source of hope in a bleak story. The narrator finds himself in a labyrinth (hence the Borges comparison) consisting of endless four-and-a-half tatami rooms. The contents are not always identical (Ozu’s love doll appears from time to time) and some might come from one of the other realities, but the food supply (fish burgers and sponge cake) is always the same. The narrator makes infinite decisions during the 80 days he spends wandering through the rooms, creating the possibility of infinite fates, but his fate always seems to be another four-and-a-half tatami room. In the end, an escape changes the narrator’s life, but he won’t talk about that drivel because (as he observed in another reality), “There’s nothing so worthless to speak of as a love mature.”

I’m not sure what to make of The Tatami Galaxy. The novel alternates between being engaging and boring. The narrator is frustrating in his incapacity for change until he changes. The idea of living a life in alternate realities is a clever variation on the venerable time loop story, but the final journey through a labyrinth piles fantasy on top of fantasy and distracts from the story’s point, assuming Morimi had one. Maybe I need to watch the anime miniseries to make sense of it all, but lacking the motivation to do that, I’ll leave it to readers to form their own conclusions.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS