Revenge may not be for everyone, but for me, this book is absolutely captivating and one of my all-time favorites. Its masterful use of imagery, allegory & character development instead bring forth a sometimes-shocking, sometimes-heartbreaking, always-unique darkness that you don't see very often in short stories/novels these days, especially in the West. It is not loud, and there are no occasions of extraneous exploitation or gore. This stories in this book are definitely dark but they are a subtle, gentle, almost minimal brand of darkness. Witness to first-person narratives that often omit key clues, the reader plays detectiveor perhaps accomplice. Instead, the real horror (and pleasure) of Revenge is the anxiety it produces in the reader, who becomes implicated in the crimes cataloged in the text. The re-listen value of the book is huge because of this – you'll definitely want to go back and see if you can discern any of these connections that you may have missed the first time. The book can be grisly at times, but Ogawa rarely goes for the lurid image. The book is comprised of several short stories that stand strong on their own, but are also intertwined in the most beautiful, delicate way. I first bought this book a few years ago thinking its stories would fall more in the horror/thriller genre (which I listen to almost exclusively), but they instead depict more of a subtle, delicate, yet unrelenting unease. This is the only book that I keep in my phone's Audible library at all times.
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