理由 Informal Reading Club

About the first two sentences on the first page of this week's reading

磁石が砂鉄を集めるように、「事件」は多くの人びとを吸い寄せる。爆心地にいる被害者と加害者を除く、周囲の人びとすべて―それぞれの家族、友人知人、近隣の住人、学校や会社などの同僚、さらには目撃者、警察から聞き込みを受けた人びと、事件現場に出入りしていた集金人、新聞配達、出前持ち―数え上げれば、ひとつの事件にいかに大勢の人びとが関わっているか、今さらのように驚かされるほどだ。

This reads to me like Miyabe telling us what she wants the book to be about – not so much the murders, and more tracing the huge web of connections that radiate out from them to all these more or less tangentially related people.

4 Likes

Finished week 1. :partying_face: I’m really enjoying the audiobook so far; I like the narrator’s voice and accent. It’s interesting, I’ve heard a few cuts here and there, where they presumably had to re-record working, but the most surprising was for a single word in the middle of a sentence, haha.

Enjoying the book so far!

4 Likes

Finished chapter 4.

We’re starting to get a better idea of the timeline. The ラジカセ incident was in January, and the new family started to appear around March. So we know that there was at least some amount of planning going into this move.
I really wonder what the big deal with the garbage incident was. If it’s evidence of some sort of crime, you wouldn’t task your child with throwing it away in the buildings garbage area. Normally you’d break it before getting rid of it somewhere that won’t be linked to you, right? But going to the effort of breaking it after throwing it away makes me think that there was something Shizuko was trying to hide. Maybe it wasn’t something huge, so initially she didn’t go through the effort of destroying the evidence, but when she realised that it might get picked up she decided to make sure that that wouldn’t happen. Or maybe she just doesn’t want people to have what “belongs to her”, even if all she is doing with it is throwing it away.

4 Likes

Finished week 2! It’s a good thing I’m enjoying the author’s writing style so far; she (?) writes with an incredible level of detail, and I’m curious how long this book would be if a more average writer (in terms of writing style) wrote it instead.

I wish I had more to talk about, but I’m not sure what I would comment on in the story so far; information is still very slowly being given out. I guess we’ll be following the police and their pace of information-gathering? Which makes me wonder if these murders will be solved.

4 Likes

Yes, the author is female. If you like the style, there is actually more :rofl: 宮部みゆき - Wikipedia
She is a very prolific writer and one of my language partners told me that she also read a lot of her books in her youth. The downside is that many of her books are only available as paperback… :grimacing:

6 Likes

Okay, I’m officially caught up. @.@ Hoping I can stay more-or-less up to date from here on; it’s real tough to binge this book. @.@

Looks like those guessing a ヤクザ element are being vindicated. Curious to see where this will go.

Ah, and thank you for this small recap. I’m having a hard time holding the dates in my head, so this is really helpful.

5 Likes

I’m caught up to through chapter 4!

I just did the entirety of this week’s assignment in one day and I gotta say it’s not a book that lends itself to that at all :joy: When it’s flowing, it’s flowing, and I’m interested and following along avidly. Then…we get a bunch of details that I couldn’t care less about and I’m forcing myself not to zone out :skull:

I took more name notes if they help anyone:

names

ch 3

片倉義文・かたくらよしふみ・42歳・片倉ハウスの経営者

片倉幸恵・かたくらさちえ・義文の妻・40歳

ch4

井出康文・いでやすふみ・マンションの管理部長・42歳

北畠敦子・きたばたけあつこ・2024号室・41歳

智恵子・敦子の母・67歳

宮崎信吾・みやざきしんご・2010号室・14歳・小糸孝宏の知り合い

木暮美佳・こぐれみか。19階に住む・高校一年生

篠田いずみ・しのだいずみ・中学2年生・810号室

田中琢己・たなかたくみ・パーク建設のマンション事業部長・40歳

I personally have already referred back to my notes a few times to remember who is who :sweat_smile:

Yeah this scene was confusing - you’d assume that anything incriminating in the player would be removed and disposed of, no need to chuck the entire machine. Also the boy apologizing for his mom made me so sad. I assume he knows she’s under some kind of stress / unusual circumstance which is why he made the apology he did. Then again, maybe she’s having a sort of mental break?

4 Likes

Week 4 starts today!

We are reading chapter 5, which is 39 pages in my copy.

4 Likes

I just read chapter 5 and it has been my favorite chapter so far :eyes:

I love that we were introduced to a whole new cast of characters and circumstances and yet the story flowed so effortlessly and frankly was a lot more fun to read than most of the preceding chapters. Lots of family details but it didn’t feel bogged down at all.
I currently think that her baby daddy killed the others and she killed him because she was scared. It seems unlikely she would be scared if she had gone there with intent to kill, right?

4 Likes

There was something a bit odd in the audiobook: very last page of the chapter, there was a whole section, maybe 20 seconds or so, in between the book lines

“姉さん、あのなあー”

and (major spoiler)

“あたし、祐司さんを殺した” と、宝井綾子は言った。

that wasn’t there in the book.

Confused me so much when I got there and suddenly lost track of where I was on the page.

5 Likes

Weird, I didn’t notice that at all :thinking: do you have the audible version? (it’s also possible I just didn’t notice because sometimes I read ahead of the narrator)

3 Likes

For me text and audiobook matched as well. (Paperback 2010, Audible)

3 Likes

Hmm. My paperback (2008 printing of the 新潮文庫 2004 edition, isbn 9784101369235) does have that text.

3 Likes

I’ll need to glance at which particular printing I have of the book when I get home after work, but it’s got this cover; I’ll have to take a picture of the end of that chapter as well. And yep, I’ve been listening to the Audible US audiobook.

3 Likes

Let’s see; so my copy appears to be a 2023 release, 13th printing.

Page with spoiler chapter-final text, chapter 5

4 Likes

This is my copy. There does seem to be difference

chapter end spoilers


Edit: my copy is from 令和5、so 2023 as well? :thinking: 五十八刷… But the back of mine looks quite different. Mine is 新湖文庫 and yours looks to be 朝日文庫

3 Likes

Yeah, dang, that’s like a good two paragraphs excised between printings. I wonder when the cuts happened? I’ll have to keep an eye out and report on any others I find.

3 Likes

Ack, edited my post while you were replying. I think it’s the publisher weirdly? They’re different…?

2 Likes

Ooh, bizarre. Yeah, my publisher is 朝日文庫.

2 Likes

My copy is from 新湖文庫 as well and has the text. So yeah, looks like it’s the publisher. I wonder why 朝日文庫 cut it.

3 Likes