「自分を信じられない自分は、いったいなにを信じて生きればいいというのだろう」

「人にはそれぞれ、生きかたというものがある。百人いれば、百通りの生きかたがあり、おそらく人は、自分以外の人間の生きかたをうまく理解できないだろ う。彼女と僕はお互いに、一般てきに範疇からはみ出している特殊な生きかたをしていた。つまり、入手した死体の写真を見せ合うような、生きかただ。」
『GOTH』

"People all have their own lifestyle. Every single person has his own way of life and is probably not able to understand the way of life of someone else but himself. She and I had a lifestyle that was different from the normal categories. A lifestyle where we showed each other the pictures of dead bodies we got an hold of."
"GOTH"

I suspect I have serious problems with concentration. I just can't focus myself on a single activity for a long time. I wrote my thesis by writing a bit for one section, than writing a bit for a different section and going back and forth, changing everytime I thought it was getting boring. In the end, I just swept all the little parts together in a semi-coherent text. I do the same with my blogposts by the way, which explains why sometimes (often?) my texts seem to be a bit incoherent. I have the same with books. I seldom read a single book at any given time, but always several at the same time. Which means that I often can't seem to finish a single book in one week, but then suddenly three or four books are finished the next. Which is kinda what happened now. Don't think I'll discuss everything this week though.

But first an easy one. I reviewed the first part of Otsuichi's GOTH earlier, so now the second part, GOTH - Boku no Shou ("GOTH: My Chapter"). Which I actually planned to do right after the first review, but yeah, sometimes stuff happens. For more background information, I refer to the previous review. Nothing has changed for this volume though, so it's still about the nameless narrator and Morino Yoru, two students who have an interest in death. And murders. And murderers. The two of them have a knack for finding murderers, though they don't really have any interest in turning them over to the police. They'd rather just shake a murderer's hand. This part contains three short stories, just like the previous volume.

Wristcut Jiken (Wristcut) ("Wristcut Case: Wristcut") is chronologically the first story of GOTH, as this is the first story where the narrator and Morino become... friends? Friends is a big word. Allies? Partners in crime?  Anyway, the town is haunted by a murderer who cuts off the hands of his female victims. The narrator finds out his teacher is the murderer and sneaks into his house to steal the murderer's collection of hands, but his teacher finds out who stole his hands (and thus who knows his horrible secret). Murderers driven to despair often resort to violence. This one does too.

In Tsuji (Grave) ("Soil: Grave"), Saeki has the strong urge to... dig holes. Well, it's not as much as just digging holes, rather than digging holes so he can bury people in it. Alive. Of course, these victims don't stay alive for long. He usually keeps his urge under check by planting trees in the holes he digs, but he has already buried a neighbourhood boy once. And this time he has captured someone, with according to her school ID is a certain schoolgirl we readers know.

The final story, Koe ("Voice"), revolves around Natsumi, who lost her sister some weeks ago. Her sister was found slaughtered, chopped up in pieces in an old abandonded hospital. One day, Natsumi is approached by a mysterious high school student who gives her a tape, with a message from her sister, recorded moments before she was killed. Natsumi will be given the rest of the message if she comes to the hospital where her sister was killed, where she will meet the same fate.

By now, Otsuichi's stories have become very predictable. A 'shock' ending might work all six times if at least the trick was different every time, but the same trick is used all the time, so Otsuichi lost me a bit there. The stories themselves are still entertaining though, great horror/mystery stories with really creepy scene depictions. And as it's one of the few relatively new Japanese mystery books translated into English, I would recommend it to anyone. But who were the people who favored GOTH over Norizuki Rintarou no Kouseki for the Orthodox Mystery Price?! That's just plain nuts.

I wonder how Otsuichi's Zoo will be. As far as I know, that a normal horror anthology (so I'll not discuss it here), but I might enjoy Zoo even more than GOTH, as I won't think about the Orthodox Mystery Price.

Original Japanese title(s):　乙一『GOTH - 僕の章』「リストカット事件 Wristcut」/「土 Grave」/「声 Voice」

「この世には殺す人間と殺される人間がいる。自分は前者だ」

「胸の奥に深く響いているのは、クラスメイトたちの楽しい話でもなければ、家族と交わす暖かい言葉でもなかった。まるでそれらはチューニングのあっていないラジオの雑音のようにしか聞こえない」
『GOTH』

"What resonated deep within my body, was not the fun chatter of my classmates, nor the warm words I exchanged with my family. Like a radio that wasn't tuned right, it all sounded like interference"
"GOTH"

While most of the books I read (and therefore buy) are detectives, I occasionally buy other books. Some might be about the Japanese language, some about videogames and once in a blue moon, I actually buy fiction that doesn't belong to the detective genre. Though I don't go through them fast. Maybe I should continue with the second chapter of Ningen Shikkaku ("Failure as a Human") by now, I think I finished the first chapter almost a month ago...

I also have some books by Otsuichi, a popular light novel writer who mainly writes horror-stories, as far as I know. I had heard about him before, as some of his novels are also available in English. But I learned most about him when Otsuchi was discussed in class once as an example of the Japanese Generation Y, and we also read/watched some of his works there. And his stories seemed interesting enough. And very, very graphic. In words. I don't know what's worse, to see such graphic things as images (i.e. manga) or just reading it in detail. At any rate, the stories left an impression. So I picked up some books by him. In the mindset that these were horror-stories. Which was not completely correct.

So I think this is the first time I'm going to write about a book, I hadn't even considered to review. I always thought Otsuichi's GOTH, also available in English, was just a horror story collection, so I was very surprised to read on the back-cover that GOTH had won the third Honkaku Mystery Taishou (Orthodox Mystery Price), beating something like Norizuki Rintarou's Norizuki Rintarou no Kouseki. Which was a great book. It also got second place in the Kono Mystery ga sugoi (This Mystery is Great) rankings. GOTH was probably the first light-novel that moved into the big-leagues (in the detective field).  So GOTH quickly moved from my 'other'-pile (which shrinks at the rate of one book every two months. If things are going well), to my 'detective'-pile (which goes at around a book a week, sometimes two).

GOTH tells the story of the narrator, a high school student and his classmate Morino Yoru, a girl always dressed in black, who actively investigate strange happenings in town. But not as 'boy detectives'. The two just have an interest in the macabre. Gruesome murders are much more alluring to them than just chatting about what was on TV yesterday. The narrator's 'hobby' is walking around crime scenes and meeting murderers. They just want to seek the darkness within man from close by. They have no interest in 'justice' or helping out other people. They just want to see blood.

While the English version of GOTH is a single release, based on the hardcover release, I got the paperback version, which is split up in two books. I'll discuss only the first one here. Mainly because I haven't read the second one yet. And because splitting up reviews makes me seem more productive. GOTH - Yoru no Shou ("GOTH - Yoru's Chapter") is the first book and consists of three short stories. It seems like the story order is slightly different in the paperback version, but that doesn't really matter.

In Ankokukei (GOTH) (Dark Type: GOTH), Morino has picked up something what seems to be the notebook of the serial murderer prowling around lately, who dissects his victims, high school girls, in countless pieces and leaves them in the mountains. Using the diary, they manage the body of a girl that hasn't been discovered yet and they wonder whether they could get contact with the murderer. After a while, Morino starts to dress and act like the third victim, but she too disappears, only leaving a text-message saying "help".

In Inu (Dog), the narrator investigates the disappearance of dogs in the neighborhood, after his sister came across a pit hidden away beneath a bridge with the remains of said dogs. In a parallel story-line, a girl and her dog are planning to kill her mother's boyfriend because they keep getting abused.

Finally, Kioku (Twins) (Memories: Twins), Morino has trouble falling in sleep, saying she needs to put a rope around her neck in order to fall asleep. She also tells the narrator about her dead twin sister. The two of them used to pretended to be death to scare people, but one day, her sister Yuu accidentally hanged herself. The narrator travels to Morino's hometown to investigate about the twin sisters' past.

All of these stories feature some kind of 'surprise' ending (though I doubt any experiences reader of the genre will truly be surprised), and while the stories feel more like horror-stories than detective-stories, these endings and the, in hindsight, fairly well plotted stories do make it a suitable book to discuss here. Especially the first story features a nice conclusion in an almost Queen-ish logical argument solution. Which was quite surprising. Though I wouldn't say this book was better in the orthodox mystery subgenre than Norizuki Rintarou no Kouseki, I do have to say I'm fairly (pleasantly) surprised by this book. But most memorable is the darkness in these stories. These stories are quite dark, with graphic violence and just creepy. Which was kinda what Otsuichi does, I remember from my class. He pulls it off quite good. So yeah, I think I'll start with the second book soon. 

[ADD: Review of the second book]

Original Japanese title(s): 乙一　『GOTH - 夜の章』「暗黒系 Goth」 /「犬 Dog」/「記憶 Twins」