Kokuhaku

My recent bedtime reading is Kokuhaku (告白) by Kanae Minato (湊佳苗) - I borrow it from AL.

The story is not at all exciting but well told. To me, it is the written mimic of some cubism painting by Palbo Picasso: A single event was outlined by five persons, each with their own view and contributes to the overall picture.

In a sense, this way of telling a story is a slight twist of The Long Murder (長い長い殺人) by Miyuki Miyabe (宮部美幸), who is more imaginative by using ten purses from the first-hand perspective. Nonetheless, the real pioneer of this trick was Ryunosuke Akutagawa (芥川龍之介). In his masterpiece In a Grove (藪の中), all seven witnesses gave an entirely different story, so much so that one could never tell what did actually happen - or whether there exists a reality at all. (Yes, that's the movie Rashomon [羅生門] of Akira Kurosawa [黒澤明].)

PS. The final chapter of Kokuhaku is a kind of self confession, which turns out to be an anti-climax. I'm quite disappointed. Alas, after the confession of Justice Wargrave in And Then There Were None, who could do a better job ?