[The Waiting Years] is a positively beautiful yet depressing novel about the personal and cultural suppression of Japanese women after the turn of the century…. [It] is written with painstakingly heart-rending prose. Enchi creates a timeless mood of sadness and suppression. The Waiting Years literally bleeds….

Fumiko Enchi 1905– Courtesy of The Yomiuri Shimbun

There are so many worthwhile things in The Waiting Years! For one thing, it was enlightening to understand and, thanks to Enchi, feel the sad state of affairs of the concubine. Sociologically speaking, the "Upstairs … Downstairs" view of upper middle class Japanese Society with many of the same contradictions and incongruities as our own society was well worth examining. Yet, it was Enchi's prose which made this book such a "tearful" joy.

Charles G. Blewitt, in a review of "The Waiting Years," in Best Sellers, Vol. 41, No. 2, May, 1981, p. 45.