Book #6: Butter by Azako Yuzuki
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a Japanese book that got mentioned as I recall it on BBC's "Between the Covers"; I was intrigued enough to read it.
The central character Rika is a journalist. The other main character is Kajii, who is a cook and also a serial killer, believed to have murdered three men. Rika starts visiting Kajii in prison, hoping to get an interview with her for the magazine she works for.
Kajii is clearly passionate about cooking; in the opening chapter, she chastises Rika for cooking using margerine and insists that she start using butter, or she'll not say anything more (she make a few other food-related requests later on in the book). It has the apparent effect of making Rika start gaining weight.
This is a book that is hard to define into any genre really; although the narrative suggests that Kajii might be innocent, it becomes apparent that the purpose is not about proving it. To me, it felt more like a commentary about the relationship between the main characters and the concept of whether you can idolise someone too much.
This was a book that constantly did not go in the direction I thought it would, and seemed very unconventional in its content, but I enjoyed it a lot. The narrative style was a straight forward third-person almost throughout, with the exception of one chapter that was told from the point of view of Rika's best friend Reiko. I loved reading about Rika's fixation of understanding Kajii better, and would definitely read another book by Asako Yuzuki.
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