This was a really compelling story investigating the reasons why a young woman, Kanna, might have murdered her father, told from the perspective of a clinical psychologist, Yuki, writing a book about the events. However I struggled quite a lot with how some aspects of the story were framed, and I still have very mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand the Yuki’s perspective as a clinical psychologist added an interesting layer to the crime novel angle, as well as her own experiences with misogyny and sexual abuse which were woven into the story and revealed gradually as Kanna’s motives are investigated and unpacked. But her position as author of a book on the events put her in a compromised position and I found some of her actions deeply unethical - such as sharing Kanna’s letters with others without her consent. There was a very blurry line between whether Yuki was treating Kanna or just trying to get information out of her, which is all valid material for a novel of course, except that this didn’t seem to be investigated or unpacked

I came round quite a bit to it by the end of the book, as the way it was wrapped up really drove home the points Shimamoto was making about the deep and pervasive effects of misogyny on Japanese society. The book does a good job of weaving together many different examples and showing how pretty much all the characters are affected by it. Ultimately though I was left with a little uneasiness about how the story was told.