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jessicaesquire 's review for:
The Summer of the Ubume
by Natsuhiko Kyogoku
I read a lot of mysteries and this has both one of the weirdest setups and one of the most complex conclusions that I've ever seen. It breaks almost all conventions of structure and plot, so if you're tired of the same old and want to go in a drastically different direction, you may want to give it a try. But be warned: the first half of the book consists largely of very very very long philosophical conversations where you keep waiting for a thing to happen or for the conversation itself to matter and I can't quite say that it ever actually does. Though it does set the stage for the time and place and characters.
Set in the 50's in Japan, our narrator is a tabloid reporter who comes across a story of a woman who's been pregnant for a year and a half whose husband has gone missing in a classic locked-room scenario. In the search for the missing man, the book weaves itself through the obstetrics clinic where he worked, the narrator's history with the woman, and the legends of spirits and possession that have persisted around the family. Our detective is his friend, a bookseller/priest, with uncanny abilities.
By the time I reached the bizarre denouement (a conversation that lasts even longer than the opening one, a real feat) I was ready for the weirdness. But I still wanted a book that didn't quite meander so much, that would just get to it already. Or at least a book with more purpose to its meandering. Truly a weird book but I can certainly see myself trying another book about Kyogokudo.
Set in the 50's in Japan, our narrator is a tabloid reporter who comes across a story of a woman who's been pregnant for a year and a half whose husband has gone missing in a classic locked-room scenario. In the search for the missing man, the book weaves itself through the obstetrics clinic where he worked, the narrator's history with the woman, and the legends of spirits and possession that have persisted around the family. Our detective is his friend, a bookseller/priest, with uncanny abilities.
By the time I reached the bizarre denouement (a conversation that lasts even longer than the opening one, a real feat) I was ready for the weirdness. But I still wanted a book that didn't quite meander so much, that would just get to it already. Or at least a book with more purpose to its meandering. Truly a weird book but I can certainly see myself trying another book about Kyogokudo.