Reviews

What a great read for Halloween season!

I was hesitating to pick it up at first since the title sounds like something I would've find scrolling through the self publishing section on amazon's read, but wow am I wrong.

First story is just pure tense and suspense. I was constantly on edge with every single sentences and actions by the characters. And the second story is just amazing. The writer and translator did an amazing job at creating/translating the mysterious atmosphere for both stories.

I swear there's just something fascinating and captivating about all these Japanese horror books.

I totally recommend this if you want something easy yet interesting read if you're in a horror mood or just wanting a break from a reading slump. ;)

llamanator's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

aug3zimm's review

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4.0

Summer: Almost silly but quite a fun little twist at the end.
Yuko: Meh.
Fairytale: Had to nope out of this one at about a quarter of the way through. They eye thing is a guaranteed freak out for me but I kept trying. Did okay up to the

dissecting the frog that continued to live. Can’t do animal abuse.

Nope nope nope.

coffeeandink's review

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3.0

http://coffeeandink.dreamwidth.org/1106718.html

dee2799d's review

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3.0

This book is a collection of two short stories, 'Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse' and 'Yuko', as well as the novella 'Black Fairy Tale'. ('Black Fairy Tale' can probably stand alone on it's own, the writer did mention it was a full length novel in the afterword and it's probably the length of some Susan Hill ghost novels.)

I'm not sure why they called the book by that title when 'Black Fairy Tale' is the strongest one of the lot, but I guess it was a pretty eye-catching title. I didn't have much sympathy for any character in the titular story but I have to say that there's always a wealth of emotions in Otsuichi's horror stories that make them more real somehow. From the worry of a mother looking for her lost child to the thoughts of a serial kidnapper (and murderer) who wanted to be free of the cycle, 'Summer' was never a tedious read even though I kept thinking of how brutal kids can be.

'Yuko' is one of those 'In the Grove' moments where I'm not really sure what is real since the characters involved both tell convincing stories, but this is something that Otsuichi does well.

'Black Fairy Tale' is easily the best of the lot, with the twisting twisted narrative that I've seen in [b: Goth|7008041|The Ghost and the Goth (The Ghost and the Goth, #1)|Stacey Kade|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1268423785s/7008041.jpg|7252832].

bibliotropic's review

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4.0

I’ve been making extra effort recently to read fiction involving non-Western cultures that’s actually written by people who have spent time living in that culture. It doesn’t guarantee a work free from cultural misunderstandings and stereotypes, but it does allow me a better opportunity to experience works that came from other cultures, written in them rather than about them, if that distinction makes sense. Research came take you a long way, but only do far; there’s a level of experience that one can only get with immersion, and the depth of immersion also depends on whether you approach the culture as an outsider or as someone who was raised within it.

Japan has been a long-time love of mine, so reading things about it and from within it always appeals to me. And over time I’ve learned that fiction from the “about” perspective usually have their problems; ones which I can spot easily, and I haven’t even been there yet. Problems with the language, problems with names, problems with weird assumptions that people often get from having watching a few anime and spent a semester of university there and then never doing more research than that. It’s probably safest for me to dive deeper into books written primarily by Japanese people when I yearn for fiction, especially SFF, about Japan.

Otsuichi’s Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse is a republication of 2 short stories. The first one, told from the perspective of young dead Satsuki, seems simple enough at first, but gradually grows in complexity and creepiness. Satsuki tells the story of how her best friend accidentally-on-purpose killed her, and the subsequent attempts to cover up the death so that nobody discovers what happened. The narrative seems a bit distanced at times, though that does make sense since Satsuki is the passive observer to all the events, incapable of acting upon anything or influencing the story due to her death. She watches as her friend and her friend’s brother go to increasing lengths to hide the body, as the tension heightens and they worry they’ll be caught, and the eventual surprising assistance by an unassuming young woman who is no stranger to hiding dead bodies.

And that final reveal was baffling for a moment, and then utterly chilling. It actually made me stop reading for a moment to consider the ramifications, and to think that Satsuki’s story was actually only a small part of a larger and grander tale. Very disturbing, and that Otsuichi wrote this kind of compelling fiction while still in high school is impressive.

The second story in the book, Yuko, is told mostly from the perspective of Kiyone, a young woman who cooks and cleans for an aged man and his never-seen wife. Kiyone thinks little of this for a while, accepting that the unseen Yuko is very ill, until one day she starts putting pieces of the puzzle together, trespasses in the elderly couple’s rooms, and sees Yuko surrounded by a lot of dolls.

Yuko, who appears to be a doll herself.

Kiyone hears from people in town that the man she works for once had a wife, but the wife passed away years ago.

And yet, we see snippets of him sometimes talking to Yuko. But is he talking to a real woman, a woman so ill she often can’t move and appears lifeless, or a life-size doll that he believes is his dead wife?

The ending is actually a bit ambiguous, and it’s easy to interpret things in one way or the other. I have my own theories on what happened, but things in the story aren’t as clear as they seem to be, and there’s always another layer to the mystery, along with speculation. For all that it was short, it said a lot, both about the lengths to which we will go to delude ourselves, the assumptions we will make about people will illnesses and disabilities, and the danger of knowing too much or too little. It’s a story for reading and then for reading between the lines.

I’d say this was a good introduction to Otsuichi’s work, a nice teaser for what’s to come. It’s low-investment; you can finish both of these stories pretty quickly, and there’s an appeal to a wide age range, since they’re rather YA-oriented but still creepy and nuanced enough to appeal to adults who want to feel a quick tingle down their spine. It’s worth a real if you’re curious about the kind of ghost stories that can come out of Japan, and, if like me, you want to read more books written by people whose native language isn’t English.

(Book received in exchange for an honest review.)

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