My Review of "The People Who Eat Darkness"

So recently, I bought this book from Half.com (which is where I always buy my pleasure reading books. I started using it in college bc the textbooks were so cheap, but now I can buy about ten books for thirty bucks, and it's usually more to ship than the actual books). Anyways, here is the cover so you can beware:

I bought this book thinking...I've read Ryu Murakami, and he nearly made me puke with his detailed, fucked up descriptions of killing. If that is Japanese fiction, I can't wait to see what comes of Japanese reality. 

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME. 

If you're going into this thinking it will be an enthralling read, that will capture you and hold your attention, you are DEAD (no pun intended) wrong. 

Now to say that this book did not grip me from the beginning would be a lie. It starts out with this girl  who reminds me a lot of myself, or reminds me of the life I would have liked to pursue: she lives outside of London, England, she is a stewardess for British Airways, and she decides with her friend Louise that she wants to relocate to Japan in order to make a bit of money to pay back her debts. I mean, the debt part I wouldn't equate with myself or a life I would want for myself, but...traveling the world? Deciding on a whim to travel to Japan and live there for a few months? That's the life. Well, except for what ends up happening to her. 

Anyways, one day about a month into her time in Japan, she goes out on a "date" (I'll explain more about that quotation mark later) where she is to get a cell phone from a wealthy client from the club where she works. She calls Louise a few times throughout the day and then...disappears. 

A couple days later, Louise gets a phone call from a well-speaking Japanese man who states that Lucie (the main character of this story) has decided to join a cult that will take care of all her debts, and that she doesn't want to be seen or heard from by her friends and family. The man then asks for Louise's address to send Lucie's belongings back. Louise, feeling uneasy, states that if he wants the address that Lucie has it, and then ends the call. 

At this point, I'm excited. I'm thinking...oh God, this sick fuck has done something and he wants another victim. The hairs on my arms are literally standing on end. 

ANNNND that's where it dies on the page. 

I think the biggest problem is that the author, an expatriate English journalist living in Japan, goes into TOO MUCH DETAIL about every little thing. 

Example: What is a hostess? 

A hostess is, typically, an international woman (to the Japanese people) that works in a club in which Japanese men (usually businessmen) come, pay a fee to the club, to sit a talk to these women, buy themselves and the women drinks, and sing karaoke, if the mood strikes. The hostess is expected to make dates outside of the club where they work with these businessmen in order to maintain their job in the club. 

There. Is that a hard concept to understand? They're not prostitutes, they are more escorts/companions. Do you really need an entire chapter- maybe ten or more pages- explaining what a hostess is? 

It's exhaustive in its entirety. We learn EVERYTHING about this girl, pretty much from her conception to her disappearance which yes, it's good to know about the victim but I would say half of this 454 page book is spent on it- her medical history, her parent's relationship and divorce, their tumultuous relationship after the divorce, her relationships with her parents and siblings, her romantic/sexual relationships (and I mean, documenting every relationship prior to Japan), her friendships, her insecurities. GOOD GOD. Do we need THIS MUCH information? 

I kept with it. I thought, there has to be something here. This HAS to get good at some point. 

I was wrong. 

Finally, about 2/3 of the way through the book, we find out that there are hostesses that have been the victim of date rape with one of the Japanese businessmen that frequents the clubs. 

It's banal, really. I mean, to get this far and have it just be a case of a drug-enduced date rape gone bad? How disappointing. 

I mean, I don't mean to sound insensitive. A girl lost her life, and I understand that. But I also hate things that get sensationalized. It's a large part of why I put down "Fifty Shades of Grey" after 30 pages. In that case, I hate that a writer, not even a good writer in the case of FSoG, feels they have to cater to the lowest common denominator (sex) in order to sell, sell, sell. In this case, I think it's kind of bogus, with all the terrible things that happen to people, women, men, children, etc, with all the serial killers and murderers sitting in jail, that a book about a tall, pretty, young, blonde English girl that dies in the midst of a date rape is one of the highest regarded books of 2012. 

Richard Lloyd Parry is a good writer, don't get me wrong. But he's a journalist. He's not out to create a story. He's out to write the longest newspaper article of his life. And for some people, that's something they enjoy. I don't. I like a story to be spun. There wasn't. 

He spends the last third of the book talking about the case against Joji Obara, the killer, and the subsequent trial. It is interesting, I should note, how the Japanese court functions and how the interrogation process for them works. The Japanese courts have a 99% conviction rate, which to me is insane in comparison to US courts with a 73% conviction rate. He gives a bit of history about Obara, not enough to really quench your thirst for knowledge in the case, but Parry notes often in this section about how much Obara sweats. I'm reading this thinking: WHY DOES HE SWEAT SO MUCH? Well, don't let it bother you because you never really find out. 

I should also do a riff about this girl's parents. They are a nightmare. They divorced after the mother, Jane, discovered that her husband, Tim, was cheating on her, and from what I could glean she's never gotten over it, even after getting remarried. The father, Tim, kind of disappeared from his children's lives and didn't make the necessary or expected show in Lucie's life until after she disappeared. 

The father, Tim, went straightaway to Japan once he was told about her disappearance with his daughter and Lucie's sister, Sophie, to search for her. They did this on-and-off for a year. It's somewhat surprising to me that the mother, Jane, never made an attempt to go out to Japan and work to find her as Tim and Sophie were, but I digress. 

Now, in Japan the defendant can pay "restitution" to the victim in order to obtain a shorter sentence before the end of a trial, which is what Obara approached the family about midway through the trial. Jane declined. Tim accepted the $850K from Obara. Obara was later acquitted of the murder of Lucie Blackman. However, since there was another previous victim he went to jail anyways. 

Tim, nice guy that he is and because he cares SO MUCH about his daughter, is so broken up about it, kept all the money so that the Lucie Blackman Trust could get the right step off. Meaning, so he could buy a yacht. Jane, along with her new husband, is suing her ex-husband for the acceptance of this money, believing (probably rightly so) that Obara was acquitted because Tim accepted, basically, "payment" for his daughter's life. 

Lucie's body was found a cave near to Obara's home hacked into pieces. Sophie, I like her. She seems to be the only one in the family old enough and well enough to understand the loss of her sister, Lucie. While the others are fighting each other, Sophie writes a letter about how she isn't ready to give Lucie to the ground- she's been cremated, she wants a small piece of her to carry with her. 

Jane, I'm sorry but the bitch that she is, couldn't care less about her last living daughter. Put her in the ground, I'm not having her cut up in pieces again. 

Death really brings out the worst in people. What do you think LUCIE would have wanted? Do you think that she would have wanted her sister, whom she loved to have her ashes or for you to just bypass it because YOU don't want her split up. Because yes, her life is all about you. 

Ugh. I think my take-away from this is not that she was murdered in this super unique and horrific way (I mean, it's horrific, but nothing you don't see nightly on Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, or any episode of CSI), but that she had the parents that she had. There is a reason why Parry didn't focus on Carita Ridgeway, the murdered girl that Obara did go to jail for...it's because her family mourned Ridgeway's loss. Not the Blackman family- whom, besides the two children, could only care about their own bullshit and not the daughter they lost, not the remaining children they have, but would rather focus on how much they hate each other and let that rule over everything. 

If you like reading newspapers, then you'll probably enjoy this book. I'm too used to reading for pleasure. I want to read something with a storyline, exciting twists and turns. The only thing that made me *gasp* was that her father accepted the $850K and bought a yacht with it. I wanted something like "In the Miso Soup." I was sorely disappointed.