* The Kamagawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai

The Kamagawa Food Detectives open with a tantalizing premise, as a father/daughter team recreate dishes from their customers’ memories (think of Remy the Ratatouille rat cooking for the food critic). Alas, the book simply cobbles one story after the other, with lovely discussions of hyperlocal Japanese dishes, which are a little hard to follow for non-natives–and blur together for a tedious kaiseki-style meal.

** Mild Veritgo by Mieko Kanai

What is it with Japanese authors and middle-aged women’s ennui? Mild Vertigo gives us a bored housewife who shares her unending stream-of-consciousness commentary of her less than exciting life. Clever premise, perhaps, but also quite tedious. Maybe that’s the whole point?

** The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto

The Premonition stars a young woman who moves in with her quirky aunt in a quest to elucidate her origins. She knows more than she’s been told, and the entire story is told in a spare and indirect style, which I liked.

*** Out by Natsuo Kirino

Calling the atmosphere of Out dark would be too kind: it’s brutal, disturbing, and peopled with unhinged characters. If you can stomach the gore (and put aside the sex fetish of a certain yakuza, which never makes much sense), you will find an intriguing mix of women’s frustration in a sexist society and a plot that surprises and delights by bringing together unlikely partners.

*** Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

The heroine of Diary of a Void is a harassed office worker who is expected to handle all the janitorial and administrative tasks of her office, just because she is a woman. When she declare (completely untruthfully) that she is pregnant, she is suddenly relieved of them, allowed to leave work earlier, gets a special pass that grants her a seat in the subway–and joins a new, kind community, that of pregnant women. I enjoyed the matter-of-fact descriptions of her daily life and how she has o work pretty hard to keep up the charade, along with the societal critique.

*** Woman Running in the Mountains by Yuko Tsushima

Woman Running in the Mountains stars a single mother in 1970’s Japan, so she’s not really accepted either by society at large or even by her own family, although her mother relents a bit when the baby appears. The story shows her maneuvering the world as an unmarried, very young mother, getting herself to the hospital to give birth, finding a daycare center (and another), and battling for jobs on a circumscribed schedule. It feels overwhelming and sad, although there’s hope by the end that she finally found a job and life that can take her away from her violent father. And the book is full of small details of Japanese life that I found delightful.

** The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

The Decagon House Murders stars a mysterious island on which four people were murdered. The members of a university mystery club arrive on a strange field trip during which they hope to solve the murders. Instead, they drop dead, one by one, and the murderer could be one of them.

The story starts very slowly so if you decide to read it, be patient. The plot is twisted!

** Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Second book in a row that I love half-way. In Earthlings, a sensitive child is ignored by her mother, loved by her father who cannot do much for her as he leaves the mother in full control of the household, sexually abused by a teacher, and madly in love with her first cousin. All that is depicted in a kind, subtle, evocative manner. Then she grows up and her adult life drops to the other side of madness, after which I lost interest.

I still highly recommend Convenience Store Woman, by the same author.

** Memorial by Bryan Washington

A Japanese-American man leaves his boyfriend alone with his mother visiting from Japan (a mother he has never met) to go minister to his estranged dying father. That’s the intriguing premise for Memorial, and it carries the book for a nice long while, as the boyfriend and the mother begin an unusual roommate relationship and the father and son discover that the past is not quite what they thought it was. I was disappointed by the end, which is ambiguous in a not-quite satisfying way. The character of the mother is surprising at every turn. She was my favorite.

** The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda

The Aosawa Murders refer to a family tragedy in which many people died at a birthday party. Years later, a book author revisits the story and we hear from various actors, for an enigmatic story that hints at the dark truth.