I will generally copy this information over thread to thread each week for ease of finding - you can always expect the schedule at the top of any weekly thread
Law and Order
Any reveals, for the current chapters must be behind spoilers or detail curtains. When we get further in you don’t need to hide details that were revealed in previous chapters.
Questions on vocab, grammar, nuance, and the like are both welcome and encouraged. If you’re not sure if it’s a spoiler, assume it is and use one of the above options to hide the text.
You are encouraged to speculate and guess wildly
Be kind about other peoples’ wild guesses
Even if you don’t read the chapter(s) in time, you are still encouraged to post in the thread for that reading once you have finished it. I advise not reading ahead in the threads as you may see spoilers.
To gauge participation - a poll!
Are you reading week 2?
Yes, I’m planning to read along/am reading along this week
I’m reading, but not at the same pace as the club
I had no intentions of reading the book, but I desire to click a poll
My non-update is that my copy still hasn’t arrived (admittedly it’s only due from tomorrow, but still…)
Has anyone read The Aosawa Murders? (Eugenia in Japanese). I really liked it so I am impatient to try this one! When I read The Aosawa Murders, reading a novel in Japanese felt like a pipe dream so it’s nice to be reminded of progress I’ve made.
At least three of us here have read it as part of a book club over at WK. I absolutely loved it and have been wanting to read some more 恩田陸 ever since. I still haven’t started on this week (was away till yesterday and didn’t manage to get any reading done) but I’ll get to it asap.
Eugenia was great, I didn’t love the ending but others did. It was a lot of fun to read with a group though as the alternating viewpoints from chapter to chapter added ambiguities that were enjoyable to untangle.
I actually read the chapters for this week a couple days ago but don’t have any notes. This book is something of a slow burn, I think.
I didn’t quite get the significance of the whole earring exchange. It took up the whole of chapter 3 and some of chapter 4, but why? Why was it important for him to guess whether she had the other earring on or not? What would it signify exactly?
Other than that, it seems he is suspecting her of preparing a trap for their guide, and she is suspecting him of deliberately hiding the fact that he had a knife. And he claims that the knife disappeared from its usual place and then reappeared, meaning someone may have borrowed it. We still don’t know much about that trip, where it was, on what occasion, whether it was just the two of them and the guide or more people we haven’t heard about. Nor how the guide died, although it’s clear the police decided it was an accident.
I took it as a very long way of saying she has some lingering attachment to him despite him leaving her for another woman and her thinking he might kill her.
Yeah, I’m getting very “missing memories” vibes from this. Wanting to unwrap what happened to the guide.
Also so long as the difficulty stays steady I agree we could probably ramp to 4 chapters at the end rather than 3 (though a poll closer to of course is best)
Yes, I can see that’s partly why she placed it in his bag (although she also mentioned something about insurance?), and why she would talk about it at length. But he seemed to be genuinely interested, even worried, about whether the other one was still on her ear. What difference would it make if it wasn’t, that’s what I’m not getting.
I’m assuming if it wasn’t in her ear it would imply she had lost of feelings for him, whereas still having it physically on her shows a connection rather than something tossed away after a breakup. Hopefully that makes sense. Like he wanted her to still care for him.
Oh right. I have one, you have the other. Makes sense. In the song, her interpretation was about the woman discarding one in a place that held some significance about their relationship, and the other under his bed. I thought she did the same thing, but the earrings in the song would probably never be found, whereas she knows exactly where both of her earrings are. However, he believes she lost the other one, and I don’t think he bought them for her, so there’s no special significance for him, is there? Oh well. I find the woman’s thought processes harder to follow than the man’s, but isn’t it always the way?
I think the song itself is meaningful to him, and I took it as her kind of passive aggressively jabbing in his face that he did the same thing to her as the guy in the song.
Strange couple. How they are still so casually living together when he’s not only got another girl but is apparently about to move in together with her is kind of baffling to me, but I guess they both want the closure of figuring out whether the other is really a murderer.
Thanks for posting the song and lyrics! There’s something really satisfying about being able to hear a tune in my head when lines from a song are referenced. Otherwise my brain tries to make up a tune that matches the cadence of the lyrics, but it usually doesn’t go very well, and I get frustrated trying to imagine what it sounds like. This drove me crazy in 世界から猫が消えたなら | L27 until I went and looked up the song.
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Law and Order 
