RaveThe Japan SocietyIt is very difficult to talk about the massive revelations that the book’s latter half delivers without giving anything away, but suffice to say, when they finally come, it is like a volley of punches to the gut, tearing away any remaining semblance of safety the reader has, and dangling them over an abyss of vertigo-inducing nausea...Onda toys with primal fears; insects, being buried, children in peril - and they terrify all the more because of the repetitive, cyclical manner in which they are employed...Like something from a nightmare by way of a David Lynch movie, the eerieness gets into us like a bad itch...Although the novel could ostensibly be touted as ‘crime’ fiction, as with The Aosawa Murders, the tone is often far closer to psychological horror...Fans of the likes of Ogawa Yoko will find plenty to enjoy here, and the book’s biggest draw can be summed up in its relentless probing and unpacking of the deepest recesses of morality...What drives us to act the way we do?...Who are we really?...Time and again, Onda forces us to confront the ugly truths behind these questions...In doing so, she comes very close to conveying in the textual format what it might mean to be ‘human’, with all the messy, fallible connotations associated with it.
