whimsyful

Incredible and incredibly wild revenge thriller, with an unusual format. The plot kicks off with middle school teacher Yūko Moriguchi’s farewell speech to her students: she’s retiring after the tragic death of her young daughter Manami. But Moriguchi has recently discovered that her daughter’s drowning was not an accident, but murder, and it was committed by two of her own pupils. And since she is not satisfied with Japan’s lax juvenile crime laws, she has decided to take revenge into her own hands…

There are six chapters total in this book, each of which is a different monologue or “confession” of some kind: a teacher’s farewell speech, a letter submitted to a magazine’s writing contest, diary entries etc. This rotation of close first and second person unreliable narrators is terrifically effective. Each character’s voice is very well differentiated, and there is a great sense of each individual’s personality, biases, and what they do and don’t know about what’s actually going on. Each chapter also has some revelation that upends what you thought you knew—it’s definitely not the sort of format that can be sustained for long, but it goes on for just long enough and then ends with a bang. I do think that the first chapter is basically a perfect short story all on it’s own, and none of the subsequent chapters hits quite the same high, but I liked the fleshing out of what were pretty one note villains enough to enjoy the rest of the book.

Do some of the plot points strain credulity? Yes. Does Moriguchi’s (former) class contain a truly incredible number of middle schoolers willing to do horrible things at the drop of a hat? Also yes. But I found this a short little gem of a suspense thriller, with some social commentary on the role of teachers, the role of parents, and how both can irrevocably influence kids as they grow up.

P. S. There is also a very faithful and beautifully shot movie adaptation which I actually watched first, but of the two I prefer the book.