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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
Villain has been in my tbr list for years. I should have picked it up earlier. It is a decent read for me. As the story progress, you will realize Villain is less much a crime, thriller story but it centers more on social conduct and loneliness of young generations who seek for companionship.
Villain has multiple point of views shifting regularly and might confuse the readers but surprisingly they are well executed and I love how the story unfolded with different characters. You might feel less empathy for the victim. Apart from that, it shows 'blaming game' in society when it comes to judgement on person's misconducts. It's appealing to see Yoshino's parents finally handle their grief and Yuichi's grandmother, Fusae stood up for herself and I think I pitied these elders the most. When the driver bus said it wasn't Fasue's fault and she needed to hang in there, I was like, a little encouragement can save everything, it means a lot to everyone. Apologizes mean a lot too.
Kogue is the worst. I still hoped there would be a twist or something that made him the murderer.
Villain has multiple point of views shifting regularly and might confuse the readers but surprisingly they are well executed and I love how the story unfolded with different characters. You might feel less empathy for the victim. Apart from that, it shows 'blaming game' in society when it comes to judgement on person's misconducts. It's appealing to see Yoshino's parents finally handle their grief and Yuichi's grandmother, Fusae stood up for herself and I think I pitied these elders the most. When the driver bus said it wasn't Fasue's fault and she needed to hang in there, I was like, a little encouragement can save everything, it means a lot to everyone. Apologizes mean a lot too.
Kogue is the worst. I still hoped there would be a twist or something that made him the murderer.
https://chyneyee.com/2016/10/27/villain-by-shuichi-yoshida/
It seems most of the female characters in this novel are talkative and desperate for love but trying to hide their sexual desires whereas most of the male characters have different desperations or additions – sex, car, film-making, pornography, love, other's suffering, revenge, showing off and etc. There’s always a lot of things in Yuichi’s mind and his laziness to talk makes him even more mysterious. At the same time, Keigo, a short-tempered playboy also makes you suspicious of him as well. The murderer could be anyone.
The story not only focuses on the main character but also involves a lot of side stories about other characters’ point of view as if they are expressing their thoughts and telling their version of the story for that night. The development of the story is quite slow especially towards the ending, it was slightly draggy as the author trying to add some additional parts to increase the length of the story.
I did some research and realized there was a movie based from this novel in 2010. I’m looking forward to watch the movie. I guess it should be good since the movie has won a lot of awards.
It seems most of the female characters in this novel are talkative and desperate for love but trying to hide their sexual desires whereas most of the male characters have different desperations or additions – sex, car, film-making, pornography, love, other's suffering, revenge, showing off and etc. There’s always a lot of things in Yuichi’s mind and his laziness to talk makes him even more mysterious. At the same time, Keigo, a short-tempered playboy also makes you suspicious of him as well. The murderer could be anyone.
The story not only focuses on the main character but also involves a lot of side stories about other characters’ point of view as if they are expressing their thoughts and telling their version of the story for that night. The development of the story is quite slow especially towards the ending, it was slightly draggy as the author trying to add some additional parts to increase the length of the story.
I did some research and realized there was a movie based from this novel in 2010. I’m looking forward to watch the movie. I guess it should be good since the movie has won a lot of awards.
Typical crime-meets-tragedy thriller. What propels the novel is the withholding of how the crime was committed - but as the reader finds out more about the killer, she becomes more interested in the villainy/culpability of those who were involved in the murder, but didn't actually commit the crime. Sometimes there's a disconnect in translation, but that's mainly due to the cultural diff. b/t US and Japan. Loved the side story of elder scams.
Villain was one of the books I bought with a Christmas gift voucher. I am interested in Japanese fiction translated into English, enjoying Natsuo Kirino and Haruki Murakami to name a few. So when I saw another Japanese translated work on the shelf, I jumped on it immediately.
Villain does not disappoint. It is a tightly woven thriller, linking together many disparate characters who are all somehow involved in the murder of a young lady on the creepy Mitsue Pass. It involves her friends, her (imagined) boyfriend, a boy she met on a dating website and various family members. One of these people is her murderer – but which one? Why was she killed?
As I’ve found with other Japanese thrillers, this is exquisitely detailed. We have background into the characters and their settings, which are translated very well into English by Philip Gabriel. We know of Yuichi’s past, his grandmother’s problems and the girls he’s been seeing. We also know about his car and what he’s eaten for snacks. This may sound superfluous, but it’s not. We warm to Yuichi and the other characters, simply because we know so much about them. Yoshida paints a very clear picture of each scene – so much so that you can picture the characters and the setting in detail. The blurb on the inside cover of the book states that it’s part police procedural, but in my opinion it’s definitely not! There is little police involvement, and it is all from the characters’ viewpoint.
The identity of the murderer also creeps up slowly on the reader. It’s very subtle, and I wondered how I could have missed the signs of who did it. Even more interesting, is the reasons why the murder was committed. One thing I won’t be doing is using any online dating sites any time soon! (A lot of the young characters use a particular online dating site, to try for romance in between work and family life. Is this a comment on the pressures of the Japanese youth of today, especially with the frequent use of love hotels in the narrative?) As is often the case with Japanese books, not everything is resolved but you can make a fairly educated guess as to what happens to some of the characters whose threads are left hanging.
I really enjoyed this book as it had all the elements of a great thriller – taut and exciting. The insight into the young Japanese was an added bonus. I’ll be looking forward to reading more of Shuichi Yomada’s work.
Villain does not disappoint. It is a tightly woven thriller, linking together many disparate characters who are all somehow involved in the murder of a young lady on the creepy Mitsue Pass. It involves her friends, her (imagined) boyfriend, a boy she met on a dating website and various family members. One of these people is her murderer – but which one? Why was she killed?
As I’ve found with other Japanese thrillers, this is exquisitely detailed. We have background into the characters and their settings, which are translated very well into English by Philip Gabriel. We know of Yuichi’s past, his grandmother’s problems and the girls he’s been seeing. We also know about his car and what he’s eaten for snacks. This may sound superfluous, but it’s not. We warm to Yuichi and the other characters, simply because we know so much about them. Yoshida paints a very clear picture of each scene – so much so that you can picture the characters and the setting in detail. The blurb on the inside cover of the book states that it’s part police procedural, but in my opinion it’s definitely not! There is little police involvement, and it is all from the characters’ viewpoint.
The identity of the murderer also creeps up slowly on the reader. It’s very subtle, and I wondered how I could have missed the signs of who did it. Even more interesting, is the reasons why the murder was committed. One thing I won’t be doing is using any online dating sites any time soon! (A lot of the young characters use a particular online dating site, to try for romance in between work and family life. Is this a comment on the pressures of the Japanese youth of today, especially with the frequent use of love hotels in the narrative?) As is often the case with Japanese books, not everything is resolved but you can make a fairly educated guess as to what happens to some of the characters whose threads are left hanging.
I really enjoyed this book as it had all the elements of a great thriller – taut and exciting. The insight into the young Japanese was an added bonus. I’ll be looking forward to reading more of Shuichi Yomada’s work.
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Once I accepted this isn't really a mystery story, and its more about the lives of people impacted by a crime, I liked this a bit more.
If you meet a character and they get a name? You will get their entire life story,possibly right at that introduction. At one point I successfully forgot someone had died, until the book bounced back to the grieving father.
I'm not sure what the author's actual stance on women is, because at times I felt the murder victim was shamed a LOT and I'm fairly sure the false rape accusation trope was used as well.
In terms of mystery you have 'how did he kill her', 'why did he kill her' and 'how long can he avoid being caught'.
If you meet a character and they get a name? You will get their entire life story,possibly right at that introduction. At one point I successfully forgot someone had died, until the book bounced back to the grieving father.
I'm not sure what the author's actual stance on women is, because at times I felt the murder victim was shamed a LOT and I'm fairly sure the false rape accusation trope was used as well.
In terms of mystery you have 'how did he kill her', 'why did he kill her' and 'how long can he avoid being caught'.
Engrossing. Picked this off the library shelf because it was in the "new mystery" section and had a good jacket design.
So the first couple of pages of Villain don’t exactly make you want to jump into the fray. Because it reads like a rather boring travel guide, written by somebody who is rather into transportation and roads. You can know all you need to know about the tolls for vehicles between Nagasaki and Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Hakata.
I went along with it, and then comes the trigger. The last paragraph (of the first section) tells the reader of an arrest, of a crime, essentially spelling it out for you.
And that’s the thing I realise about Japanese crime fiction, at least the three that I have read so far (Out, The Devotion of Suspect X). That it is not about the mystery, it’s not technically a whodunnit, because you already know whodidit. Because it’s right there in your face, in the first few sections, the first few pages even. These books are more about the ‘why’, and the effect the murders have – on the murderers themselves, the victim’s family and friends, the other suspects.
Villain, by Shuichi Yoshida, brings out a different part of Japan, one of love hotels and online dating, and ageing seaside villages full of elderly residents. It is a quite ugly, rather lonely view of Japan.
“The scenery flowing past changed, but they never seemed to get anywhere. When the interstate ended, it connected up with the prefectural highway, and past that were city and local roads. Mitsuyo had a road atlas spread out on the dashboard. She flipped through the maps and saw that the highways and roads were all color-coded. Interstates were orange, prefectural highways were green, local roads were blue, and smaller roads were white. The countless roads were a net, a web that had caught them and the car they were in.”
Told from multiple viewpoints especially towards the end of the book, Villain shines when the focus is on the victim’s father, who struggles to come to terms with his daughter’s death, and his painful realisation that he didn’t really know his child at all.
Villain was an engrossing, thought provoking read, and leaves you wondering, who – or perhaps what – is the real ‘villain’ here.
I went along with it, and then comes the trigger. The last paragraph (of the first section) tells the reader of an arrest, of a crime, essentially spelling it out for you.
And that’s the thing I realise about Japanese crime fiction, at least the three that I have read so far (Out, The Devotion of Suspect X). That it is not about the mystery, it’s not technically a whodunnit, because you already know whodidit. Because it’s right there in your face, in the first few sections, the first few pages even. These books are more about the ‘why’, and the effect the murders have – on the murderers themselves, the victim’s family and friends, the other suspects.
Villain, by Shuichi Yoshida, brings out a different part of Japan, one of love hotels and online dating, and ageing seaside villages full of elderly residents. It is a quite ugly, rather lonely view of Japan.
“The scenery flowing past changed, but they never seemed to get anywhere. When the interstate ended, it connected up with the prefectural highway, and past that were city and local roads. Mitsuyo had a road atlas spread out on the dashboard. She flipped through the maps and saw that the highways and roads were all color-coded. Interstates were orange, prefectural highways were green, local roads were blue, and smaller roads were white. The countless roads were a net, a web that had caught them and the car they were in.”
Told from multiple viewpoints especially towards the end of the book, Villain shines when the focus is on the victim’s father, who struggles to come to terms with his daughter’s death, and his painful realisation that he didn’t really know his child at all.
Villain was an engrossing, thought provoking read, and leaves you wondering, who – or perhaps what – is the real ‘villain’ here.
Crime novels are often the best kind of fiction for illuminating a society, and I've certainly found that to be the case with the Japanese crime fiction I've read. They really highlight some of the aspects of Japan that are so completely different from life in America. In this first of Yoshida's books to be translated into English, a sense of isolation and oppression hangs heavily over many of the characters, both young and old, and the overall effect is a portrait of a stifling society at odds with itself.
The story concerns the killing of a young inurance saleswoman along an isolated mountain road, and the people affected by her murder. Moving back and forth in time, we meet the victim and her workmates on the night of the killing, two men she had been involved with and their friends, her parents, the grandparents of a another character, and a few others. The cast of construction workers, insurance saleswomen, store assistants, barbers, and poor retirees is almost a neorealist slice of modern Japan, showing the decided unglamorous side of the country. Through their eyes and voices, the book shifts between the past and present, slowly building a complete picture of victim and perpetrator.
The author is not really concerned with the question of whodunnit, so much as whydunnit. There's only the merest nod to genre convention in terms of keeping the reader guessing as to who the killer is. The book is about the psychology behind the murder and conflence of influences that led to the act. One thing that's kind of nice about it is that it avoids both the familiar big city setting, as well as the really rural areas, instead finding a place of desperation among the medium towns, small cities, highways, and shabby love hotels of sourthernmost Japan. Desperation is probably the key to the novel, as so many of the characters are trying to escape the mundane routines they are stuck in, while the larger society sits ready to judge each and every one of them. It doesn't really work as a traditional crime novel, but as a portrait of modern Japan its well worth reading.
Note: The cover has a really arresting design, but it's kind of an odd and misleading one, since there's no sign or mention of a gun in the story, nor are any bones involved in any way. Doesn't really capture the tone of the story at all.
The story concerns the killing of a young inurance saleswoman along an isolated mountain road, and the people affected by her murder. Moving back and forth in time, we meet the victim and her workmates on the night of the killing, two men she had been involved with and their friends, her parents, the grandparents of a another character, and a few others. The cast of construction workers, insurance saleswomen, store assistants, barbers, and poor retirees is almost a neorealist slice of modern Japan, showing the decided unglamorous side of the country. Through their eyes and voices, the book shifts between the past and present, slowly building a complete picture of victim and perpetrator.
The author is not really concerned with the question of whodunnit, so much as whydunnit. There's only the merest nod to genre convention in terms of keeping the reader guessing as to who the killer is. The book is about the psychology behind the murder and conflence of influences that led to the act. One thing that's kind of nice about it is that it avoids both the familiar big city setting, as well as the really rural areas, instead finding a place of desperation among the medium towns, small cities, highways, and shabby love hotels of sourthernmost Japan. Desperation is probably the key to the novel, as so many of the characters are trying to escape the mundane routines they are stuck in, while the larger society sits ready to judge each and every one of them. It doesn't really work as a traditional crime novel, but as a portrait of modern Japan its well worth reading.
Note: The cover has a really arresting design, but it's kind of an odd and misleading one, since there's no sign or mention of a gun in the story, nor are any bones involved in any way. Doesn't really capture the tone of the story at all.
Too much unnecessary detail to wade through, which clutters and stops the flow of the story.