Review of Don’t Laugh at Other People’s Sex Lives by Nao-Cola Yamazaki

A very short “novel” in the style of Norwegian Wood about an unconventional love match with an ambiguous ending.

A very short “novel” in the style of Norwegian Wood about an unconventional love match with an ambiguous ending.
It is touching at moments. With embarrassing frankness Nao-Cola charts the inner lives of odd characters with uncommon examples. A few lines are LOL-funny. A few others are clearly eccentric and should’ve been edited out. But this daring approach is applauded. Literary fiction shouldn’t follow a formula, though I am not sure I’d categorize this as such. It discards many familiar romance tropes and becomes more of a slice-of-life, featuring a disaffected youth of the artistic temperament who aimlessly acts out of emotional instinct without thinking too hard about the nebulous future or the creak and groan of missed opportunity.
Somehow affecting and inconsequential at the same time.
This is coming out at the same time as the author’s other tiny book called Beautiful Distance, which I am reading next. Why were they not published in one volume?
This could be read in an hour or two max.