‘The Third Love’ is a time-bending meditation on romantic love

At first look, Hiromi Kawakami’s “The Third Love” reads like a romance novel that makes use of a “fated mates” trope that our trendy sensibilities would think about outdated at finest, predatory at worst.

The narrator, a 40-something Tokyoite named Riko, begins the novel by explaining how she met her husband, Naruya Harada, earlier than she was 2 years previous — and was immediately smitten. From toddling after him as a baby (he’s 10 years older and accepted her devotion with amusement) to breathlessly sneaking out of the home to fulfill him as a youngster, Riko’s love for “Naa-chan,” as she calls him, is solely kismet.

Trust Kawakami, nevertheless, to by no means let issues be so easy. A winner of quite a few accolades, together with the Akutagawa, Tanizaki and Yomiuri literary prizes, and identified for her off-beat, mental writing, Kawakami as an alternative challenges readers with an intertextual and sophisticated consideration of affection. Kawakami’s rumination is extra much like how Plato considers love in “The Symposium,” a Socratic dialogue presenting varied views, than to any romance novel, though erotic love for Kawakami is actually one in every of its foremost contemplations.