A Man

By: Keiichiro Hirano / Translator: Eli K. P. William / Narrated By: Brian Nishii

Length: 10 hrs and 1 min

OUCH! -and- OY!!! -but- Oh the END! Tissue please?

Okay okay okay

Maybe A Man by Keiichiro Hirano is, like, truly, a 2-star Listen. But it’s like this see, after kinda sorta suffering through MANY of this audiobook’s 10-hour running time, and sighing heavily, even rather twitching with discomfort quite a bit?

The end, oh the end!

ANY story that has me crying cuz o’ a well-crafted, Uber-emotionally resonant, finish gets that ol’ Extra Star on the rating.

After a clunky prologue that sets up how unreliable our main character, Kido, will be, the story takes off with a good woman, who’s suffered tragedies in her life, being dealt yet another blow. Her second husband, of three years and nine months, has just been killed in a logging accident where he works. Theirs was a slow blooming friendship that blossomed into a strong and steady relationship, a really good marriage.

But on the 1-year anniversary of his death, the woman reaches out to her dead husband’s estranged family, only to discover from the obnoxious brother that her husband was nooooot the man he said he was. Our main character, Kido, who is a lawyer by trade, finds himself absolutely beYONd intrigued. Soon he’s sleuthing away in this kinda sorta noir-ish tale of what makes a person’s identity, a Who Are We All, Anyway? kinda theme.

What caused the sighing and twitching was that, to me, this, aside from just TWO characters, is SUCH a This Was Written By A Dude story with The (Sans-Two-Guys) Men being pretty creepy and somewhat lecherous. I mean, even whilst Kido is bemoaning the coldness that has settled into his marriage, he’s off getting vodka gimlets with a hot bartender chick he later rather stalks for a bit on social media. The brother of the dead husband is truly GROSS! and when we find the man who IS the man Kido’s been sleuthing for? Well, I shall leave it to your own eyes to roll, your own toes to curl, if you should happen to give this audiobook a go.

One thing?

Here it goes: I’m finding m’self somewhat on pins and needles when I see that Brian Nishii is narrating something. Sometimes he delivers a strong heartfelt performance; sometimes he phones it in. Here? Oy the PLODDING that is alleviated only when he bursts forth with melodramatic tones. It’s drone drone drone then POW! Here’s The DRAMA! So when Hirano’s writing plods, Nishii doesn’t do anything to jazz things up. Still?

That ending.

Where there is beauty in a life well-lived, no matter what your name is, your past is, your tragedies have been.

Where there is love, so wonderful, so magical, that comes from just being A Good Man…

Amazon