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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Other Murakami Strikes, May 23, 2007
This review is from: Piercing (Mass Market Paperback)
Kawashima Masayuki seems like a decent enough fellow. He has a steady job, an advertisement illustrator, and he has a lovely wife named Yoko who has recently given birth to his daughter Rie. In fact, Masayuki is financially stable enough to set up a small baking school in his home for his wife who worked as a professional baker before giving birth. However, Masayuki suffers from one small problem. Every night for at least ten days or so Masayuki has hovered over his daughter's crib holding an ice pick near his newborn's body, even lightly scratching her cheek with its tip accidentally when his wife startled him one night. With his head filled with aromas that smell of burning yarn or burning finger nails, Masayuki somehow manages each night not to stab and kill his young daughter.
As the novel unfolds, we learn that Masayuki's mother was highly abusive when he was young especially after his father died. He had a younger brother also, but he was the only one abused because he resembled his father. During his numerous beatings, Masayuki learned how to separate his mind from his body in order not to feel the pain. Because he didn't cry out, his mother would become even more enraged and beat him more. Masayuki was eventually put in a home for abused children where he would remain for years. He would not meet his mother again until his high school graduation and at that moment in time he was able to do something that he had yearned to do for years: he hit his mother as hard as he possibly could. Troubles continued until he was nineteen-years-old. At that time he was in an abusive relationship with a thirty-eight year old prostitute and spent much of his time high on paint thinner. Their relationship ended one night when he stabbed her in the stomach with an ice pick. As one of the voices in his head tells him, he needs to stab another woman, this time killing her, to take away the desire to kill his daughter. Masayuki decides that is what he is going to do, and he begins a methodical plan to kill an S&M prostitute. However, he gets a little bit more than what he bargains for.
Often referred to as the "other" Murakami in some literary circles because he shares the same family name as Murakami Haruki, Murakami Ryu burst into the Japanese world of letters when he wrote his debut novel Almost Transparent Blue back in 1976 which eventually garnered him the coveted Akutagawa prize and since then he has written several novels, including the magnificent Coin Locker Babies and Audition the basis for the Miike Takashi film of the same name, short story collections, directed a number of films, and even hosted a television show. Murakami's novels tend to be quite graphic in sex and violence, but it is not completely gratuitous. His books attempt to unmask the true brutality that remains dormant in humans and shows what might happen once these limits are broken. He is also quite good at building suspense. Several times while I was reading the novel, especially close to the end, I had to put the novel down because the tension became too much to bear. An interesting book for those who are interested in reading some of the darker works that modern Japanese literature has to offer, Piercing makes for a quick, albeit nearly horrifying read.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly breathtaking, May 29, 2007
This review is from: Piercing (Mass Market Paperback)
I'm not going to recapitulate what happens in the book. I've been a death investigator for 35 years now, especially the pathology of homicide, and have talked to a number of serial killers...this book still managed to terrify me. Murikami's ability to get into the amoral mind of a potential killer is amazing and the novel reaches such intense levels at times that I had to put it down and rest.
Murikami's prose is always delicious but this is a true tour de force.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Narrow Roads at Night, January 31, 2011
This review is from: Piercing (Mass Market Paperback)
Ryu Murakami was born in Nagasaki in 1952. His first book, "Almost Transparent Blue" was first published in 1976 and won that year's Akutagawa Prize. "Piercing" - his ninth book - was first published in 1994, with the English translation following in 2007.
To his neighbours, Kawashima Masayuki seems to be living a perfectly happy, quite normal life : a successful graphic artist, he's married to Yoko and the pair have a 4-month old daughter called Rie. However, life isn't entirely perfect - both have had difficult pasts. Yoko had once attempted suicide, after a previosu relationship collapsed. Kawashima's parents broke up when he was young, and he was regularly beaten by his mother - something he still hasn't really forgiven her for. He has long suffered from insomnia and, occasionally, still suffers from the night terrors. On the whole, however, married life had been going well for Kawashima. However, some of the old fears have recently returned and, for the last ten nights, Kawashima has been standing over Rie with an ice-pick in his hand. Having vowed never to harm his daughter, Kawashima is terrified that he might. He finally decides that there's only one way to ease the building pressure : he'll have to use his ice-pick on someone else. So, Kawashima comes up with a cover story, takes a little time off work and books himself into a hotel in town. He then carefully plans his crime, and settles on an S&M prostitute as his victim...unfortunately, Sanada Chiaki isn't quite something he could have really planned for.
Only the second book by this Murakami I've read - after "In the Miso Soup" - and I found it a good deal better. It's a little more believable somehow and I found it easier to empathise with the characters...not that I'd want to be locked in a room with either one of them, admittedly. Despite being a little gruesome, it's a book I was able to get through quickly and - of thrillers are your thing - it's well worth a read.
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