A series of drawings made by a young woman before her death.
A child's disturbing picture of his home.
A desperate sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments.
Each contains a chilling warning.
Each reveals a terrible secret, hidden in plain sight.
Uketsu's eerie mysteries have captivated millions of readers. Can you find the clues in these strange pictures and uncover the sinister truth that connects them all?
RATING : ★★★★・☆ 4.5/5
REVIEW WITH SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT
Do you ever finish a book and stare at the wall for a bit? That's my experience with this book.
I have just recently started to get into thrillers and horrors, i have grown up watching investigative and detective shows with my mother, and with time i have learned to make a game out of it. A puzzle sort of. I love a good puzzle. It's me against the detective, who will find out the truth first?
I approached the book with the same mentality, i wanted to solve the puzzle, but despite my "clever" mind and experience as an artist, it was until the latest chapters that together with the detectives i managed to piece it all together and when i expected to find a cold blooded killer i found something much more terrifying : The human instinct to protect and to preserve tangled with egoistic and egocentric ideals in a bloody mess.
Often i feel like thriller writers fail to give their stories a proper structure in favor of creating a "mind blowing twist." That's a mistake. It's a horrible horrible and arrogant way of writing, wanting to deviate the reader at all cost just for the sake of surprising them at the end, but then what you get is not surprise, just confusion, because nothing adds up in the end.
Ukestu doesn't do that. He leaves a pretty substantial trail of breadcrumbs and clues but we stil don't get the confirmation for our suspicions well past the first half of the book, we are also deviated but in a clever and not egoistic way. We are given plenty of information to get to the end yet like the detectives, we can't just piece everything together on pure suppositions, we need proof.
But at the background of all of this there is a very sad story of a family drama lasting for four different generations. We are given hope in thr end that all will be fine, but the shadows of what brought to this dimm it drastically.
The book is written in a very simplistic way, and (i swear i don't mean this to generalize just because the author is Jaapanese) it reads like a manga. But it has nothing to with The images, which are actually very helpful and give a more accurate view of what the characters are describing. I'm talking more about the tempo and structure of the story, it reminded me greatly of mangas such as Monster or Death Note. The way the settings are described and the inner dialogue of the characters, i could almost see the speech bubbles. Personally it didn't take away from the enjoyment, actually it add to it, giving me a sense of reflection without fossilization on the discussion. It's the kind of book that i can see being easily adapted in to a mini serie or a movie.
One thing i have noticed many people complain about was how "hard" it was to keep track of all the characters. Admittedly there are many, but so there are a lot in many english written media. Now suddenly because it's non westerner names it's "hard to keep track" ? I had absolutely no struggle with remembering who is who and when they appear and what role they have. Especially considering that names and identities are very important in this book.
I haven't found any substantial themes or important meesages. It's far from a literary masterpiece, but it was non the less a very fun and interesting experience.
There was a moment towards the end when Naomi walks us through her past that made me quiver and i had to take a break despite not being the most violent moment in the book. When she kills her mother, it disturbed me deeply. Maybe because she was so small and it made me extremely sad to see a child forced to do something so awful. But a part of me is unsettled because it reminds me of all the fights i had with my parents as a little boy and how i wished i could turn on them the same amount of anger and rage that they were throwing at me ( my parents never beat me nor were they abusive but they did commit mistakes like every parent does.) So to see a child actual retaliate so violently...it was scary. It was sad and messed up and it disturbed me in a way that i consider to be splendidly done.
The temes of the book might escape me for cultural reasons. Japan and Italy couldn't be more different. So please feel free to let me know what your thoughts are if you have a clearer idea.
Loved this book, loved Strange Houses, and I'm loving Strange Buildings. The connections is absolutely fantastic. Keep it Uketsu, seriously, give me more.
I work with a neurosurgeon who was the only one certified to use the diamond tip drill on call and he had to go in and cut it off a man who had a necrotic penis because he waited too long to go to the ER. He’s forever nicknamed lord of the rings and is still to this day flabbergasted about it
Apparently there’s a “kids shouldn’t be allowed in grocery stores” thing being spread on TikTok because they might scream or run around and look yeah that’s annoying but at a certain point you’ve gotta just put up with kids being a little annoying in public. Sure the kid pouring milk in the isles is the fault of a shitty parent and should be asked to leave, but a single mom with an otherwise controlled by crying toddler isn’t doing anything wrong. I think you’ll live if someone’s two year old starts screaming in their arms in isle 3. It might be annoying but that mom is probably having a worse day than you
Also, is a lot of the Internet just, unclear on the thing where you learn how to do stuff by doing it? You know what you get if you don't let toddlers into the grocery store? School age kids who don't know how to behave in the grocery store, which is worse. Don't let them in either? Teenagers who don't know how to behave in the grocery store, which is much worse. Just ban all minors from the grocery store? Now you have adults who don't know how to behave in the grocery store, and at that point we may as well not bother with society.
Toddler in the grocery store is learning:
How to find items in space that was organized by someone else
How to share narrow or complex walking spaces with strangers
How to operate in a space full of things they can touch and maybe even pick up, but don't own
How to peacefully coexist with strangers in a public space when everyone is doing their own (similar but separate) tasks in the same place
What kinds of food exist
How to tolerate having nothing in particular to do in a high stimulus environment
How to wait in line
How to greet a cashier and complete your transaction nicely
How to pay for things in a store
Most of this they are learning just by following and watching their adult(s). They're also, and this is especially important for families who don't take much public transit, getting to see a broader cross section of people than most other age appropriate activities will readily show them. The only other public place of this sort that a toddler might routinely go is the library, which is different in ways that are potentially instructive if you have only existed for 30 months.
discoholicmusic
ellievsbear
annaxmalina
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
