Confessions

(Extremely delayed review because my book club took forever to get around to discussing this one and then I just forgot about it for an additional two weeks...)

There are exceptions to every rule and apparently this was a good counter-argument to my "I dislike children's POV in fiction" rule. But this was a strong reinforcing argument of my "teenage boys are monsters" belief.

Were I not reading this for a book club, I don't know that I would've pushed through the first chapter, which I really did not enjoy. It was structured as an uninterrupted monologue from a teacher towards her class of middle schoolers on her last day. But it was delivered in prose with zero punctuation or dialogue tags, which was weirdly off-putting to me. I'm glad I stuck with it though, because subsequent chapters told from other characters had completely different formats, including a series of dated diary entries (which was my favorite chapter because I love epistolary).

At its core this is a revenge tale that ends with a sort of sick and satisfying sense of symmetry. (Actually kind of reminded me of Oldboy if you've ever watched that movie.) I've seen some other users complain that it's the same story told five different times, just from a different POV that reveals a little more about the central event with each iteration - and it was - but that wasn't a detriment to me.

Also, slight spoilers, one of the inciting incidents of the book involves a complete misunderstanding about HIV specifically, which causes events to spiral out of control. I know other readers took issue with that, and there's valid criticism as to whether the author understands how the virus actually works, but it didn't rub me the wrong way. I think that's because the ultimate comeuppance wouldn't have occurred the way it did if the literal children involved didn't believe what they were told about it by a teacher they trusted. I'm not gonna expect a minor to have the same reasoning and deduction skills as an adult in this situation.

What can I say about this, it was fine but certainly nothing remarkable. There were a multitude of things in this book that I think fell short, and it all came together into one average horror/thriller experience.

In Confessions, we are initially following a middle school teacher, Yuko Moriguchi, who has decided to retire at the end of the year. The book opens with her telling her class that she'll be retiring and the reason is because her young daughter died tragically during the school year on school grounds, and she couldn't cope with it. But it is revealed in her final lecture to her students that she knows that her daughter's death wasn't actually an accident. She knows that her daughter was murdered by some of the students in that very room. What follows is a multi POV suspenseful, tragic, and often horrific exploration of all of the events that happened leading up to her daughter's death, the events afterward, and the explosive conclusion to this sad tale.

Let's start off with what I think was done well. The story was moderately disturbing, particularly the ways in which some of the kids were supremely fucked up in the head. I've noticed in a lot of translated Japanese literature, the English translation often reads as a bit stilted and emotionless, and while that's been a criticism for other works I've read, I think that actually worked in this book's favor. The disturbing content was really juxtaposed with the seemingly straightforward, sterile prose, emphasizing some of the more "psychotic" behaviors of some of the characters. I also really like the structure of the story, the shifting POVs and perspectives of the story did a good job to both unveil details of the story we didn't know while also weaving new story threads into the whole narrative. Unlike some other reviews, I would not go so far as to say there were a lot of "twists" here though. But I don't think a thriller really needs twists to be successful.

Moving onto the "needs work" portion of the review.. how do I organize my thoughts about this.. let's first start with the things that I initially clocked as a bit shitty. While there was no connection between AIDS or HIV to the gay community, they are inextricably linked culturally and I am particularly sensitive to HIV misinformation. While it is not itself "problematic" to use the threat of HIV infection as a compelling plot device to amp up tension and fear in the story, I do think the plot relied heavily on HIV transmission misinformation and exacerbated harmful stereotypes for perceptions of people living with HIV/AIDS. While the story did attempt to rectify this at the very end, I don't think it did an adequate job to correct it. I don't mind using such a thing to drive tension, but the way it specifically relied on stereotypes bothered me. Also, there was a very, very brief mention of a trans character that was handled in a bad way. Honestly, the way this book handles a lot of gender was annoying and distracted from the story.

There were a fair number of things here that I just don't think made it a particularly successful horror/thriller/whatever book. Firstly, it just wasn't very horrific/thrilling/tense. Not counting, you know, all of the murder, there wasn't a ton here that made me feel particularly uncomfortable or disturbed. Yeah, so kids are a bit fucked in the head, I already knew that. I was hoping to have more of an emotional reaction honestly. And while the shifting POV and trickle of new details about the story were interesting at times, the majority of the time we were reading about the exact same events over and over again just from different perspectives. And while the more disturbing parts of the book were enhanced by the straightforward prose, the rest of the book just read as dry and repetitive. But again, as with all thriller/horror that I read, its gravest sin was that it just didn't elicit the emotions I think it was trying to. The exception to this would probably be the strong vindication I felt on behalf of our main character, the teacher. Despite not being with her perspective for long, I liked her as a character and I was rooting for her the whole time, she could do no wrong in my eyes.

From what I've seen, the other book by the author looks to be quite similar to this one. I'm curious if it is any better, but I'll probably end up reading a summary of it instead. If you're looking to dip you toe into the genre, then pick this up but it's not really anything to write home about otherwise.