A review by abookbish
The Frolic of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima

mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I was pretty happy that I haven’t come across a novel that displeased me this year. Sadly, what had to be that book that broke my luck was a Yukio Mishima one. What makes me more disappointed was that the cover and the title would be part of my top 5 favorites for each category, but the story did not live up to them.

The writing in The Frolic of The Beast was poetic, but it became too descriptive that it took readers far away from the plot. By the time you get back to the plot you’d already forgotten what happened. Compound that with  very odd timelines and characters you vaguely understand even in the ending. It’s not even because they were morally gray, they were just badly written. What could have been an interesting look into a love triangle gone wrong, The Frolic Of The Beast was flat all throughout.

What could have saved this book was if Mishima took on a first-person perspective like what he did in the Epilogue. Also, it’s only in the last 15 pages out of a 164-paged novel that the book gets interesting and clear. The entire novel was just a mishmash of everything and not in a way for readers to do a full on analysis of it to get a deeper understanding. It was just all over the place.

All amazing artists have that one work that isn’t at par with any of the other works they’ve made. This frolicking beast is a black sheep when it comes to Mishima works and I do not suggest it to be your first Mishima read.