Banana Yoshimoto Goodbye Tsugumi

Here's an attempt to a book review. (just a little aside before I start, today we had our equipe's xmas lunch at the rungis market, another post about that later, so I am in a postprandial coma and do not dare do an experiment in these conditions, at the risk of contaminating the whole lab). So, Banana Yoshimoto, hugely popular in Japan, and abroad too by now, especially amongst teenager girls as I gather. I had read a couple of hers books a few years ago (probably 10?), enjoyed them, but came away once the pattern became old. Came back to Goodbye Tsugumi because I needed a small paperback to read in the metro and was still under the spell of murakmi haruki's wind up bird chronicles, and was looking for a similar mood, which I did find, and I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It felt a bit like a manga comic, where the figures are delineated and defined with a very thin, clean, black line, the colors pastel, and the ocean is in every square. Less self-involved with sorrow than the past books, a bit more perverse.
Next: lettera aperta, by Goliarda Sapienza, I haven't found it translated in english and it's a real pity.