What I Saw and Why I Lied – Judy Blundell – 3/5 This novel takes place in the years following World War II back in the US. Our narrator’s mother has a new husband who was off to the war and our main character, a teenager in high school, goes with her mom and her husband to a resort in Florida, right at the beginning of school. While she’s there she meets a local boy, a bellhop at the hotel, who is kind of ugly […]
Iyamisu. That’s all you need to know.
According to Wikipedia, one critic called this novel the “Gone Girl of Japan”, which is interesting because it was originally punished in 2008, four years before Gillian Flynn’ s most popular novel. At any rate, they both fall into the iyamisu category of fiction, which is Japanese for “eww mystery”, and is reserved for the deliberately shocking form of storytelling familiar to anyone who has read Gone Girl (which is most of us). If you take nothing else from this review – please incorporate that […]
To The Extreme
Confessions is a psychological thriller/murder novel that keeps a fast pace and tight organization throughout. Told from the points of view of multiple narrators, the story focuses on the murder of a middle school teacher’s 4-year-old daughter and the fallout from that murder. Parent-child relationships, teacher-student relationships and the allure of revenge are the themes that run throughout. Chapter one is narrated by middle school teacher Moriguchi. It is the last day of the term, and she announces to her class that it is also […]