[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1: What's this? Genius writer Otsuichi's genre-defying masterpiece of short stories is finally available in paperback, divided into "1" and "2. Twin sisters, but for some reason only the older sister, Yoko, is abused by their mother ("Kazari to Yoko"). Abducted and imprisoned by a mysterious criminal, what measures do the older sister and younger brother take to escape? --The story is told in five stories, including "SEVEN ROOMS".
(Translator: DeepL)
Zoo 2: Electric Zoogaloo
On one hand, Zoo 1 and 2 are totally separate collections of short stories with no connection (in fact, the English edition combines them and appears to change the ordering), so if you want to start with 2, be my guest I guess. On the other hand, I'd consider 2 a little weaker both for story quality and as learning material.
The stories still more or less propelled my interest enough through their varied and somewhat ridiculous premises (a man builds a house out of dead bodies! a person has a magic voice to command people to do things straight out of the Preacher comics!), but it does have a bit of a Zoo B sides feel to it. A story like the aforementioned murder/architect one just doesn't build the atmosphere as well as stories in 1 did. In one particular weak link, a late plot twist in a murder story was written so confusingly I thought I was misreading the sentences. I'm still not sure I 100% get it... but I found native English speakers also saying the story confused them in the translated English, so I'm going to blame Otsuichi for this one. He generally has a tendency as a writer to write in a wild last second twist, or let his stories fizzle out, and too many here suffer one fate or the other.
But it's fun in a pulpy way. There's a real sense of humor here that I didn't feel in Zoo 1. People act with a straightfaced absurdity that tickled me -- a particular story sees a man who can't feel pain, currently bleeding from a knife in his back, try to entice his kids and incompetent forgetful doctor, most of whom can't wait to see him die, to save his life. It's amusingly blunt and I loved it.
On the language learning side, everything I said about Otsuichi writing in a relatively straightforward way holds.... until you get to one particular middle story, in which I struggled the most I have since back when I was much shakier on reading. The character narrates in a more overly polite way, the words get more obscure, and the sentences get longer and longer. I almost dropped the story, and it made this book review come weeks later than it would've otherwise. This extremely uneven difficulty alone makes this hard to recommend as learning material unless you consider skipping that one, if you're at my still early-ish reading level.
All that said, Otsuichi manages to amuse and compel me even when his writing feels a little weaker, so I'm likely to explore his work a little more. A solid 3.