WATAYA Risa : I want to kick you in the back

A winner of Japan's prestigious Aktugawa Prize for rising literary talent, I Want to Kick You in the Back follows Hatsu, who is in her first year of high school and having a hard time fitting in with her classmates. She meets Ninagawa, an outcast who is obsessed with a model/pop idol but who has no interest in the actual girls around him. Gradually, Hatsu develops an impulse towards Ninagawa, not of love or infatuation, but one that can best be described as a desire to kick him in the back. This novella does a great job of exploring the ambivalent feelings of a teenager in search of a meaningful relationship.

My main problem with this book is that Hatsu is a teenager : she doesn't really know what she wants, she has a superiority complex toward her classmates, she might be attracted to a boy but she might not, she is sullen, she is uncomfortable with people rejecting her but she is doing most of the rejecting and so on.

Her friend Kinuyo is more open but she's not really bright, the boy she has a crush on (?), Ninagawa, is obsessed (bordering stalkerish) about a pop-star who's not really famous : he's seedy and not really interesting either.
It was supposed to be a sensitive read about teenagers, I found it mostly boring with an unlikable main character. I finished it, though, but it did not bring me much. Which surprised me because I really enjoyed her other novel, not translated in English, Pauvre chose (= Poor thing), that I found to have a deeper meaning underneath the comedy.