[DeepL Translation - needs review] Seven nightmares from the horror short story writer who created "The Toy Repairman" and "Man-Beast Craft"!
--The ceiling will pull you in if you keep staring at it.
The tatami mats are rotting, the beams are at their limits, and the huge run-down house looks like it is about to collapse.
In order to take care of her mother-in-law, Fumiko left her husband who was working alone and started to live in this house with her daughter and mother-in-law.
Fumiko's mo...
7 short stories with twists, dark humour and a healthy amount of gore. Each one of them kept me fully engaged. They were different to each other and quite creative, I thought. Two of them I'm not even sure I interpreted right, but I enjoyed them all the same. Recommended if you like demented stories and don't mind a few grotesque or even disgusting descriptions here and there.
Was it horror? - Maybe? I wouldn't find it strange if it was classified as general fiction instead, but there are definitely horror elements.
Was I scared? - No.
Was I creeped out/grossed out? Yes, often.
Did I laugh? - Much more than I expected.
Trigger warnings... I suppose there are a lot of themes that can be sensitive, but that's to be expected from a horror book. I'm very sensitive to animal death myself, but I'll say that what was in the book proved to be tolerable. Listing here what I remember: animal death, body horror, gore, mention of sexual abuse/rape, mention of abortion.
Language: Pretty straightforward throughout, although also playful. Some light Kansai-ben in one story, and two different chunks of only hiragana or very light kanji text, which I strangely found relatively hard to read, even though there was no hard vocabulary in there.