My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura

Japanese crime fiction

Original title – Watashi no Shōmetsu (私の消滅)

Translator – Samm Bett

Source – Review copy

I am a terrible reviewer of my review copies. I sometimes just get in my own groove, and books get put aside and forgotten. I am such a mood reader and always want to be me as a reader. I have been sent books and have not got to them, but with this being Japanese challenge month, I found this and remembered I really enjoyed Cult X by the same writer when I reviewed it. Nakamura is one of those crime writers who is as much a literary writer as a crime writer. In Japan, this is reflected in the fact that he has won a couple of major book prizes for his earlier works, and some of his books have also been made into films. His books defy genre, really, and this book is one such book.

I guess it started with the tuneral.

A girl who lived nearby was kidnapped and discovered dead. The younger sister of one of my

classmates. People sweating through their black funeral clothes milled awkwardly about. I was in the third grade, and watched these strangers dressed in black surround my classmate. His parents stood nearby, holding a portrait of the lost girl.

They had apprehended an unemployed man in his thirties, who went on to testity to having lured the girl into his car and murdered her when she began to kick and scream. The

man had a hulky build and wore ratty basketball shoes. I had seen him wandering around

town several times, leaning a little forward as he walked.

As he reads the diary in the opening chapter and a death

My Annihilation is a book made of one man’s diary, in part, as we meet a man in a remote mountain lodge as he reads this diary of a serial killer, Royadi Kozuka, the man who has written this dark diary of the events and killings he may have committed. But this book is one of those that folds on itself as the man who is reading ther diary is trying to be the man in the diary and as we get further into the book he is held at a mental institution as th pyschatrist try to untangle to identity of the man and the writer of the dirasy and how these all fit together wutha woman that has died called Yukari and we see her desperate past life. AS the multiple threads unfold, the story and tale are revealed, but there are also gaps in the narrative, with black pages between the chapters. As I said, this is a writer who loves to play with the style of writing but also the way a story is told.

He was a quiet kid, easy to miss. The adult couples in his family were at odds with one another, and sometimes his grandfather beat his grandmother and his father beat his mother.

Because his parents were both busy working, he was looked after by a man named Taka, who had

an emotional disorder and was unable to use both his legs. After Taka went away and Miyazaki’s grandfather died, a noticeable change came over him. He began inflicting violence on his parents and on animals while obsessively collecting anime and manga.

Children can become unstable with thedeath of a parent or close relative, but by the time his grandfather had died Miyazaki was already twenty-five years old and inordinately distraught. When he saw a little girl on her own, he told himself “I’m gonna catch that kid” and said something to her. Of particular interest was his perception of himself during that moment.

What makes a kiler ?

 

I wish I had got to this earlier, as it is not only one of the most inventive crime books I have read, with many layers like peeling an onion back, even to the tears of the horrific crimes we see along the way. But the use of past, present, and identity all collide at times. Who is who, why has x and y happened all unfold, but not always as you think they will, the truth always seems to shine through. This has the darkness, at times, you find in a writer like Bolano, that feeling of not quite knowing what is going on, that you draw from Kafka’s works. But also the brutal nature of mental health treatment that brought me back at times to one flew over the cuckoo’s nest with its mention of electrotherapy, etc. I was also reminded of Pamuk’s crime books by another clever writer. I could see this making a great mini series, with the various threads, since it would suit a mini-series format, since we know each part slowly comes together like a complex jigsaw puzzle. One for Kafka fans, fans of clever crime books that keep you thinking about who is who and about identity and revenge! I’m sure I have said this before, but Soho Press does some of the most inventive book covers. Have you read any books by Fuminori Nakamura?