Woah. I'm glad I hadn't read up more on this before going into it. Leads off with an almost Studio Ghibli-style family vacation that then takes a very sharp turn into something both very dark and almost clinically furious. Murata isn't happy with the expectations on women in society, and that could easily have made it one of those books I find yourself agreeing with more than I actually like or get swept up in it. But Natsuki is such fascinatingly fractured POV character, looking at everything from a curious perspective where she almost brings us too close to the horror of both individual and societal violence while that slight dissociation makes the story both more bearable and, somehow, even worse.

If you're into Ottessa Moshfegh this isn't miles off. Or maybe it's the other way around.