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Overview
A pulsating psycho-thriller from Ryu Murakami, author of In the Miso Soup
A renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami—a musician, filmmaker (Tokyo Decadence), TV personality, and award-winning author—has gained a cult following in the West. His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, won Japan’s most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies, and his most recent psychosexual thriller, In the Miso Soup, gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination. In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.
Synopsis
A pulsating psycho-thriller from Ryu Murakami, author of In the Miso Soup
A renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami—a musician, filmmaker (Tokyo Decadence), TV personality, and award-winning author—has gained a cult following in the West. His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, won Japan's most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies, and his most recent psychosexual thriller, In the Miso Soup, gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination. In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.
Publishers Weekly
In this short, tense and brutally eloquent thriller from Japanese author Murakami (In the Miso Soup), Kawashima Masayuki, a young urban professional, faces the terrible fear he will stab his baby daughter, Rie, just as he once stabbed the stripper he lived with when he was 19. He decides killing a young prostitute will alleviate the building pressure inside him and protect both Rie and his sweet wife, Yoko. He plans everything meticulously, but what he doesn't bargain for is that his intended victim, Sanada Chiaki, an s&m worker, is as disturbed as he is. During their appointment, Chiaki experiences a "Nightmare" episode that results in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse. Murakami doesn't waste a word or a movement in this near-haiku of a tale that's breathless with anxiety and fraught with pain. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
In this short, tense and brutally eloquent thriller from Japanese author Murakami (In the Miso Soup), Kawashima Masayuki, a young urban professional, faces the terrible fear he will stab his baby daughter, Rie, just as he once stabbed the stripper he lived with when he was 19. He decides killing a young prostitute will alleviate the building pressure inside him and protect both Rie and his sweet wife, Yoko. He plans everything meticulously, but what he doesn't bargain for is that his intended victim, Sanada Chiaki, an s&m worker, is as disturbed as he is. During their appointment, Chiaki experiences a "Nightmare" episode that results in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse. Murakami doesn't waste a word or a movement in this near-haiku of a tale that's breathless with anxiety and fraught with pain. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.Library Journal
Murakami (Almost Transparent Blue) offers a twisted psycho-thriller that examines child abuse, obsession, and power in postmodern Japan. Kawashima Masayuki is a husband and father who hears voices in his head telling him to stab soft flesh with an ice pick. When his wife almost catches him touching his baby's face with an ice pick, Kawashima decides to go on sabbatical and fulfill his psychopathic desire to stab a woman in her stomach. For that purpose, he arranges to hire a prostitute, whose Achilles heel he also intends to cut. Sanada Chiaki, the prostitute who arrives, is a woman haunted by her sexually abusive father and obsessed with self-mutilation, suicidal thoughts, and a passion for piercing her own body. When these two damaged people come together, twisted plans and imaginary voices clash, and awful visions are brought to light. This dark, sexually charged, and thrilling short novel is a strong academic collection choice.
—Ronald Samul