"Monotone"

I would have to agree with my fellow classmate, when they described Otsuka style as being “monotone.” I feel that her style of writing is lacking an emotional connection between (me) the readers and with what the author is trying to tell us. However, I do not think Otsuka is a minimalist; she does a good job (at times) of setting the seen, for example when the little girl is on the train and she is remembering the horses and how she use to live in the old horses stables. With this particular part of the book, Otsuka does a good job painting a clear picture of what the little girl was remembering and feeling but for me the rest of the book it just not keeping my attention. What I do not understand is that if Otsuka felt that this particular story was important to her as well as other Japanese people, then why didn’t she use more emotion, or why didn’t she use several different stories instead of explaining just one, (many Japanese people went through this.) As I read through this book, I am finding it hard to get through, maybe it because most the books that we have read to this point have had somewhat of an emotional connection and could not help but feel for most of the characters in the other books. For example, we just finished the book Push, and Push was a very powerful book, it had strong emotion, as well as graphic pictures of what Precious went through. I feel like this book is like sitting through a boring lecture, that you cannot wait for it end. Also I might be more interested in the book if I did further research on this particular time in history because I had no real understand of this particular time. I understand that to many Japanese people that this story is important to them, and they like that it was told, but like I previously stated, maybe if Otsuka interviewed many others the book would not be so boring.