Chiharu's Book Reviews

Utopia Kanae Minato Shueisha Bunko 2018 ★★★☆☆ I’ll introduce Utopia . This book was written by Kanae Minato and published by Shueisha Bunko in 2018. This is a mystery novel that was awarded the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize. There are three main characters who are Nanako, Mitsuki and Sumire. Nanako lives in a Buddhist store and Mitsuki teaches how to make preserved flowers to neighbors. Sumire is a ceramist. They lived in the same town called Hanasaki Cho where many artists lived. For example, a photographer, a fabric dyer, a violin craftsman and a ceramist like a Sumire lived there. Nanako and Mitsuki each have a child. The children are good friends, but Nanako’s daughter is in wheelchair due to a traffic accident when she was a kindergarten student. Then Sumire made a brand to support people who are in wheelchairs. That brand name is “Clara no Tsubasa” and it has straps with the motif of angel’s wings. Nanako, Mitsuki and Sumire are friends but gradually began to doub...

Today, I’ll introduce a kind of heavy story. I read “そしてぼくは銃口を向けた”(And then I pointed the Gun). This book was written by Makiko Iizuka. She wrote about many gun shootings at high schools mainly in the 1990s. These are true stories that happened in America. She went to meet the criminals in prison to hear their stories. Why did I choose this one? The reason is that I had an assignment to find a nonfiction story in another class, and I was interested in this book. What do you think of gun shootings? I had thought the gun shooting criminal is just a dangerous person before I read this book. However, I found out that it was not necessarily so from the book. The criminal is also a child. They had many troubles in their school, such as bullying or backbiting from others. And then, they tried to tell others their pain and suffering with a gun. This is too sad, isn’t it? They were called strange people many times by others and they were aware of i...