Honestly I despised this book and I'm always shocked hearing other people's reactions to it because it's like we read two completely different works.

I think maybe if it was three times longer it could have said something of value in the style it committed to but as it's written, few books I've read this year have left me feeling so....empty. Regardless of what it was intending to say I don't believe it achieved saying much of anything at all. Was it making a point about how we should accept people like Keiko and their "fringe" lifestyles? Because then why did it treat her predicament as so bleak, and her lack of progress in the end as so uncomfortable? Was it commentary on work culture, and the way people are remade into cogs to fit into a machine? Well then, why did it use an autistic character for whom that lifestyle genuinely and in a positive manner makes it possible to be a functioning adult?

I too consider myself to be someone who lives "outside" of society and even then couldn't find anything to connect to. The one thing that does jar me the most to hear people say is that they found this book funny. What was funny about this book, that the MC was autistic and asexual and therefore out of the norm for you?

Idk. A frustrating read for me.