Specs
Reviews
(5/5)Gruesome book with a silver lining
This book contains the titular story 土の中の子供 as well as a short story.
土の中の子供
What a powerful story! But! Please be aware that this one is not for the faint of heart; the trigger warnings apply with all their strength, and please make sure you've noticed them if you are sensitive wrt certain triggers. (Further triggers: Alcoholism, sex, stillbirth.)
In this story, we encounter a young man who tries to go to the extremes regarding various kinds of bodily and mental sensations. We follow him through a short stretch of his life, while gradually learning about his incredibly cruel childhood, which makes his behavior much more relatable. We also get a glimpse of how his life might unfold into the future.
Personal opinion and interpretation: I have no issues with the violent and horrifying parts of the book, but of course I wondered from the start what our protag was up to with his behavior. Him confirming that he is neither masochistic nor suicidal helped a lot, to be honest. I think he is mainly trying to "feel himself", which is understandable given he basically shut himself off from his bodily sensations during his childhood torture. Also, interesting side aspects like his alcoholic girlfriend and his hallucinations while being at the children's home director's place made the story very realistic as well as very unsteady, in a way. I thought that these two broken characters finding and supporting each other even through such hard times gave hope for a somewhat brighter future for the two of them. Also, him not wanting to see his father was very consequent, even though he might have received some money from him, perhaps. So it felt to me that he became very strong and self-confident even after his horrible experiences. This gave the book a very bright and hopeful ending, I thought.
蜘蛛の声
A short story that raises issues such as "What is reality?" "What is memory?" "What is truth?". Very interesting, and left me with a lot of questions.
Dark, but still manageable
「俺が持ってるのは、暗いやつばかりだぞ」 says one character about the books he owns, and I felt that it described these two stories pretty well.
This book is indeed dark and unsettling, although not completely without hope.
I did not find it especially difficult from a language point of view. I only needed to look up one or two words every few pages, so it felt very readable overall at my intermediate level.
Sometimes I had to reread the page I had just read to be sure I had followed everything correctly, but that seemed to come more from the way the story is narrated than from the Japanese itself.
I liked it a lot. It deals with heavy themes, but it felt compelling all the way through.