Confessions (告白)

⚖The case for it

A teacher stands in front of her class and delivers a calm, controlled speech about what happened to her daughter, and readers say that opening chapter alone is why they could not put the book down. What follows is five more documents from five more voices, a letter, a diary, a blog post, each complicating what the last established. Readers report changing their minds about who deserves blame more than once. Minato takes gestures of care and classroom ritual and turns them menacing. Critics call it “the Gone Girl of Japan.” One reader: “my jaw is on the fucking floor.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Each narrator retells the same incident with marginal new information, and “the retelling of the same story became less interesting after five times.” Because every chapter is somebody addressing you after the fact, nothing is dramatised; readers wanted scenes. The adults are implausibly oblivious, and the late developments ask for coincidences. Even admirers call the resolution too tidy for a build-up this dark. “A stark and barebones prose” that in English “at times read awkwardly.” And a fair number say the first chapter is the best and the rest is a comedown.

— the honest librarian

5h

honest hours

7

sittings