Butter by Asako Yuzuki – theme – Japanese best sellers.
We didn’t quite buy into the hype around this one; while finding it to have a strong, unusual story and fascinating insights into Japanese culture and mores around food and fatness. If anyone would like to write a sentence or two about these books, please email me janet.bayliss@esneft.nhs.uk – so we can post to the book group part of the ESNEFT book group website.
As we commented in the meeting, this is a book which seems to have been around a while (published in 2017) in Japan, but the translation seems to have picked up a lot of media and social media interest in 2024, with widespread praise.
The title, Butter gives a good introduction to a big theme in the book; concentrating as it does on the relationship between two women: Kaji, a convicted killer and a journalist (Rika) who realises that the only way to get detailed interviews with her is to concentrate on Kaji’s obsessions with cooking and food. There are other characters involved: Rika’s friend Reiko who becomes drawn into Kaji’s web; also Rika’s work colleagues, friends and relations. The book is shot through with detailed passages of elaborate food writing in vivid and glorious descriptions; which must have worked for some readers, but generally not for us.
Getting past the food writing revealed a strong plot-driven story, some traumatised but involving characters and a fascinating background in that Yuzuki, the author based Kaji quite closely on a real case of a female serial killer who 2012 was convicted of the murder of 3 men, with an implication that there were more; all her lovers who she had partially ensnared through her culinary skills. We found the character of Kaji to be compelling but repellently manipulative; while the implications in the book around the attitudes of Japanese men to women and women to each other were quite disturbing. The precise questions of whether Kaji actually murdered her lovers and if so, why are not answered; which was frustrating for some members of the group.
Asako Yuzuki is a relatively young career writer (born 1981) who has written a number of books, mainly fiction, which have won her many prizes in her native Japan. Some have been translated; and there have also been adaptations of some of her works.
Our recommendations for this month included the strange but deeply involving dystopian minor classic I who have never known men by Jacqueline Harpman, where a group of women are trapped in a cage; along with Hold back the night by Jessica Moor, covering the HIV/AIDS pandemic and told in three parts. The main character is a naïve young girl who is faced with the consequences of the pandemic; as she works with gay men. It is a powerful, interesting book – but perhaps a bit too dark for a World Book Night choice.
Several of the above are on Libby, check them out at the ESNEFT Libby pages.