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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love this novel because of the questions it asks and the picture it paints. 3.5 stars.
Villain is not a speedy read. I am sometimes thrown off by how off tangent things become. Like it wants to tell more than one story. It did. It just felt disjointed. However, the powerful endings to the story arc of the victim's father and to the central character, the "villain", saved this book and actually made me reevaluate my 2 star rating.
What is honor? What is love? Who is the victim? And who is the villain? Many questions. Many answers. Like human life, Shuichi Yoshida provides shades of grey and enough talking points to fuel a healthy discussion. Recommended.
Villain is not a speedy read. I am sometimes thrown off by how off tangent things become. Like it wants to tell more than one story. It did. It just felt disjointed. However, the powerful endings to the story arc of the victim's father and to the central character, the "villain", saved this book and actually made me reevaluate my 2 star rating.
What is honor? What is love? Who is the victim? And who is the villain? Many questions. Many answers. Like human life, Shuichi Yoshida provides shades of grey and enough talking points to fuel a healthy discussion. Recommended.
An exhilarating read this was! It almost blew my mind off, but I realized that what I was reading was the simple reality of life. The characters portrayed were very human. There is no one villain here. It showed how things relate, how it takes on a butterfly effect, and how a simple action from someone can change a life - for better or worse.
The murdered victim, Yoshino Ishibashi, doesn’t particularly evoke sympathy. She came off as rude and a bit manipulative. She wasn’t a great friend. The murderer, I had hoped, wouldn’t be the murderer. I sympathized with his terrible circumstances. The initial murder suspect, however, treads on balance - neither too great nor too bad but flawed indeed. Now the characters related to these three spread out like a spider web. One tug and it comes tumbling.
But death is a terrible thing. It has a domino effect. And it affected the entire web.
"A person disappearing from this world isn’t like the top stone of a pyramid disappearing. It’s more like one of the foundation stones at the base. You know what I mean?"
The book delves deep into the psyche of its characters, exploring their motivations and inner demons. It also touches on the theme of guilt and how it can consume a person. As it was nearing its end, all characters longed for the salvation they needed.
"The sky seemed close enough to touch."
The plot is well-crafted, with twists and turns that keep the reader engaged until the very end. Overall, Villain is a thought-provoking and gripping read that will stay with you long after you've finished it.
The murdered victim, Yoshino Ishibashi, doesn’t particularly evoke sympathy. She came off as rude and a bit manipulative. She wasn’t a great friend. The murderer, I had hoped, wouldn’t be the murderer. I sympathized with his terrible circumstances. The initial murder suspect, however, treads on balance - neither too great nor too bad but flawed indeed. Now the characters related to these three spread out like a spider web. One tug and it comes tumbling.
But death is a terrible thing. It has a domino effect. And it affected the entire web.
"A person disappearing from this world isn’t like the top stone of a pyramid disappearing. It’s more like one of the foundation stones at the base. You know what I mean?"
The book delves deep into the psyche of its characters, exploring their motivations and inner demons. It also touches on the theme of guilt and how it can consume a person. As it was nearing its end, all characters longed for the salvation they needed.
"The sky seemed close enough to touch."
The plot is well-crafted, with twists and turns that keep the reader engaged until the very end. Overall, Villain is a thought-provoking and gripping read that will stay with you long after you've finished it.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Disconnection drives this story. Children disconnected from parents and grandparents. Workers disconnected from their colleagues. Sisters, twins even, disconnected from each other's lives. It reminds me of an Antonioni film. Not only that, but the theme determines the form as well. Shuichi Yoshida creates a modernist masterpiece with this work that shifts its points of view as well as its perspectives in time. Enormously complicated, the character sketches lead into dead ends. Deliberately. For throughout the story evades a centering. Even the final pages turn away from the seemingly sentimental and satisfying ending it looked like the reader was going to enjoy. Instead, everything and everyone is thrown right back into their compartmentalized, separate worlds. Fittingly enough, perhaps the main character (only "perhaps"), Mitsuyo goes back to her job in a department store. Departments. Compartments. What's the difference. The villain here is the disconnection each and every character endures without hope of changing.
This is one of the best books I have read in ages. Told from a variety of viewpoints, it's never clear what is true and what isn't. Motivations are questionable and characters that should be reviled become the object of sympathy.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny, Violence, Abandonment
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
You may have seen Villain touted as "the next Stieg Larsson." Never mind that Steig Larsson is a person and Villain is a book. Probably the people who said this meant Stieg Larsson's books. So aside from the fact that they are both translated into English and involve murder, I noted the following similarities between the two for however many chapters it took for me to get bored of writing stuff down while trying to read this kind of dull book:
- we're repeatedly told what street everything is on, and about characters driving on one street and turning onto another; these kinds of details are meaningless to readers who don't live in Sweden or whatever small city in Japan this book is set in.
- Brand names are mentioned constantly (Tiffany earrings, Louis Vitton purse, Audi A6) along with associated prices; this is not nearly as blatant in Villain as we never learn what kind of cell phone everyone uses.
- whenever characters sit down for a meal, we're told what they eat and how much it cost; they eat fewer sandwiches and drink less coffee in Villain, but there is a stunning description of how the bill was split three ways after a group outing.
That's it. The only other thing in my notes was that in Villain, one? of the characters doesn't smoke, which would never happen in a Stieg Larsson novel. Eh. Maybe if I'd taken more careful notes, this review would continue to be amusing. But like I said, the book is pretty boring, so what do you expect?
So anyway, I read this like two months ago but I keep forgetting to review it, probably because it was largely forgettable. It's a really weird book. It's ostensibly a mystery story, but it tells you who the killer was pretty much right away, then it fakes you out for a while, making you think that no, maybe it wasn't him, but really, who else can it be? And what do you know: it is.
As referenced above, I kind of did read this because I saw it referred to several times as "THE NEXT STIEG LARSSON?!" (interrobang?!) Now that I have finished it, of course, I can see that reviewing it as such is ludicrous, and offers a total misreading of why The Girl Who... books are popular. I mean, yes, this one was also translated, and it's also about a grisly murder mystery, and there is some social commentary (amorality among the youth in modern Japan) and whatnot, but, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't think anyone reads Stieg Larsson for the way it delves into Swedish politics (unless readers actually like to be slightly bored and confused).
No, Stieg Larsson's books are clearly popular because of the title character; it certainly isn't their airtight plotting or, good lord, the writing. So when I pick up a book touted as "the next Stieg," I'm not looking for a sexy mystery, I'm looking for a sexy mystery with interesting characters. Villain... doesn't really have those. There's no real protagonist -- the story follows four or five people that are loosely connected to the murderer and his victim -- and though we find out a lot about each of them, they never feel developed beyond the circumstances of the plot. Which is weird because the half-baked plot seems beside the point; my impression is that the author sees this as a character study first, but aside from forcing me to spend a lot of time reading from the POV of a weak-willed sociopath, he doesn't really do anything interesting in that regard.
And from the "don't judge a book by the cover" files: while this is a neat image, there are no guns in this book, nor are there skeletons. So yeah, that doesn't really makes sense at all. Not even thematically, unless you want to get really obtuse about it ("See, it's about the way VIOLENCE is structured into the society, like a foundation or BONES if you will...").
- we're repeatedly told what street everything is on, and about characters driving on one street and turning onto another; these kinds of details are meaningless to readers who don't live in Sweden or whatever small city in Japan this book is set in.
- Brand names are mentioned constantly (Tiffany earrings, Louis Vitton purse, Audi A6) along with associated prices; this is not nearly as blatant in Villain as we never learn what kind of cell phone everyone uses.
- whenever characters sit down for a meal, we're told what they eat and how much it cost; they eat fewer sandwiches and drink less coffee in Villain, but there is a stunning description of how the bill was split three ways after a group outing.
That's it. The only other thing in my notes was that in Villain, one? of the characters doesn't smoke, which would never happen in a Stieg Larsson novel. Eh. Maybe if I'd taken more careful notes, this review would continue to be amusing. But like I said, the book is pretty boring, so what do you expect?
So anyway, I read this like two months ago but I keep forgetting to review it, probably because it was largely forgettable. It's a really weird book. It's ostensibly a mystery story, but it tells you who the killer was pretty much right away, then it fakes you out for a while, making you think that no, maybe it wasn't him, but really, who else can it be? And what do you know: it is.
As referenced above, I kind of did read this because I saw it referred to several times as "THE NEXT STIEG LARSSON?!" (interrobang?!) Now that I have finished it, of course, I can see that reviewing it as such is ludicrous, and offers a total misreading of why The Girl Who... books are popular. I mean, yes, this one was also translated, and it's also about a grisly murder mystery, and there is some social commentary (amorality among the youth in modern Japan) and whatnot, but, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't think anyone reads Stieg Larsson for the way it delves into Swedish politics (unless readers actually like to be slightly bored and confused).
No, Stieg Larsson's books are clearly popular because of the title character; it certainly isn't their airtight plotting or, good lord, the writing. So when I pick up a book touted as "the next Stieg," I'm not looking for a sexy mystery, I'm looking for a sexy mystery with interesting characters. Villain... doesn't really have those. There's no real protagonist -- the story follows four or five people that are loosely connected to the murderer and his victim -- and though we find out a lot about each of them, they never feel developed beyond the circumstances of the plot. Which is weird because the half-baked plot seems beside the point; my impression is that the author sees this as a character study first, but aside from forcing me to spend a lot of time reading from the POV of a weak-willed sociopath, he doesn't really do anything interesting in that regard.
And from the "don't judge a book by the cover" files: while this is a neat image, there are no guns in this book, nor are there skeletons. So yeah, that doesn't really makes sense at all. Not even thematically, unless you want to get really obtuse about it ("See, it's about the way VIOLENCE is structured into the society, like a foundation or BONES if you will...").
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A woman's body was found at the Mitsuse Pass. She was murdered by way of strangulation. The suspect was a college student, a rich kid. The woman's friends claimed that the guy was her boyfriend because that was what she told them. But the woman was not what her parents and friends knew her to be. And all her secrets and lies began surfacing as the investigation progressed on...
This is not a whodunnit mystery. Really, there are only two suspects, no red herrings and you pretty much would know who did it from the beginning. It's not really a mystery either, because there's nothing surprising or mind-blowing about it, nothing that really hooks you to read on to know the why, how and who.
I almost DNF-ed this book many times. Mostly because the book is like 40% graphically sexual, and in a very raw, disgusting and disturbing way. I feel like it's completely unnecessary to be describing in detail about such acts. It's almost like the author is sexually frustrated and wants this to be his outlet. It's funny to me how if this was written as an "porn" "erotica" or "romance", it would not have the same respect it actually got for writing this. Another thing I did not care about in this book was the detailed descriptions of transportation. Of course, these are just not my preferences, other people might enjoy them.
But I persevered anyway, and partly because I wanted to see the movie because my favourite actors are in it. Partly because I wanted to know why it won a couple of awards. And in a way I'm glad I did.
Because this book is a huge question about who truly is the villain in this story. The killer? The victim? The family? The society? The culture? And I did like the way the author mirrors one event to another in the characters' lives, to show how and why they acted the way they did. This is a story about identity, abandonment issues, love, longing, loneliness, desperation, sacrifice and selfishness. It made me cry so bad at the end, I hated that I loved the ending when the journey to read through was so miserable for me.
So don't ask me whether I'd recommend this to you, because I don't know. I hated a big chunk of it but I also loved some parts of it.
This is not a whodunnit mystery. Really, there are only two suspects, no red herrings and you pretty much would know who did it from the beginning. It's not really a mystery either, because there's nothing surprising or mind-blowing about it, nothing that really hooks you to read on to know the why, how and who.
I almost DNF-ed this book many times. Mostly because the book is like 40% graphically sexual, and in a very raw, disgusting and disturbing way. I feel like it's completely unnecessary to be describing in detail about such acts. It's almost like the author is sexually frustrated and wants this to be his outlet. It's funny to me how if this was written as an "porn" "erotica" or "romance", it would not have the same respect it actually got for writing this. Another thing I did not care about in this book was the detailed descriptions of transportation. Of course, these are just not my preferences, other people might enjoy them.
But I persevered anyway, and partly because I wanted to see the movie because my favourite actors are in it. Partly because I wanted to know why it won a couple of awards. And in a way I'm glad I did.
Because this book is a huge question about who truly is the villain in this story. The killer? The victim? The family? The society? The culture? And I did like the way the author mirrors one event to another in the characters' lives, to show how and why they acted the way they did. This is a story about identity, abandonment issues, love, longing, loneliness, desperation, sacrifice and selfishness. It made me cry so bad at the end, I hated that I loved the ending when the journey to read through was so miserable for me.
So don't ask me whether I'd recommend this to you, because I don't know. I hated a big chunk of it but I also loved some parts of it.