3.5 
 Two gleaming, sad, pristine stories about loss and healing. They're written with a lot of sentiment, which translates into beauty sometimes and corniness at other times. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Katayama's Socrates in Love, for instance, but I also got the feeling, several times, that Yoshimoto writes like Murakami haters like to think Murakami writes.