地獄堂霊界通信 1

As I was reading, I kept wondering whether this book was intended for children or not. Turns out that I was right to wonder. Apparently this is a rewrite by the same author of stories originally written for children, so that they would appeal to a wider audience, presumably the original child readers, 15 years later.

Basic premise: Three ten-year-old boys are close friends and their town's menace, running around with no respect or fear, having a lot of fun. But when one day they venture into a very creepy old medicine store run by a spooky old man of indefinite age, they start to be exposed to a world parallel to ours, inhabited by spirits, ghosts, and strange powers.

There are 4 separate stories in the book, and I found it tedious that each time the characters were introduced anew. After each story got going though, it kept my interest quite well. I was surprised at the darkness and the often cruel imagery for a children's book. There was quite a lot of death, past and present, and in one instance even an infant mauled to death by a stray dog. While it didn't happen "on screen" so to speak, it was still unexpected and shocking.

Language wise it wasn't as easy as one would expect from a children's book. There is almost no furigana, and there's a lot of very informal dialogue that I couldn't decipher when I first tried this book as a novice reader some years ago. The meat of the story is usually suspenseful though, so it reads quickly once you get going.

I'm really unsure to whom I would recommend it, if at all. I enjoyed parts of it, got bored by other parts. It's not easy enough for a children's book, not complex enough for a grown up book.