No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

BATB score: 8/10 💕

a few weeks after Osamu Dazai wrote No Longer Human, he and his wife committed suicide by drowning in a canal near their house; that was also a week before his 39th birthday

*reader discretion advised* this book is not for everyone; this book covers suicide, addiction, abuse, depression, depersonalization disorder

Best to: this book is a semi-autobiography, semi-novel, semi-suicide-death-note; it’s like he is trying to tell us something, a final word to what he is about to do

Best as: this book is pure sadness and depression written in sorrows explained indirectly as feeling different from and having to put on a show for others

Best for: sometimes it’s difficult to be human - the aspirations, the conformity, the capitalism, the happiness (whatever that is)

Best quotes: “As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives.”

“I managed to maintain on the surface a smile which never deserted my lips; this was the accommodation I offered to others, a most precarious achievement performed by me only at the cost of excruciating efforts within. Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown, a child who never spoke a single truthful word.”