58. Butter – Asako Yuzuki

A book so focused on butter cannot be called a slow burn so much as a slow melt. Butter is based on a real case, The Konkatsu Killer, which also involved an overweight woman dating and taking a lot of money from men via a dating site. I’m sure the shock experienced in Butter about how an overweight woman could be considered desirable enough to be able to kill multiple men she met on a dating site is based on reality… and that’s a significant part of this book as well.

Rika, the journalist, tries to understand Manako Kajii, the killer here is so focused on luxury food and old ideas about what women should be like while also unexpectedly confident in her rounded body. Rika ends up taking on a bit of a food quest in order to understand Kajii, who says she hates women and doesn’t want to talk about her case – she wants to talk about food and tells Rika things to eat and what context to eat them in occasionally. And Rika gains weight! The horror. Or at least, some people see that as a horror, evidence she doesn’t care about herself or a loss of the her they knew and thought of as a male substitute at girls’ school because she was their “prince,” like her friend Reiko, who is a bit ruthless overall and a very interesting character.

Of course gaining weight and enjoying food consistently is the kind of thing women are societally expected to avoid around the world, regardless of whether their weight gain has anything to do with food or a new medication or hormonal changes they can’t stop, etc. Societal expectations and Kajii as someone who doesn’t fit in overall and has a fantasy version of reality she’s presenting to Rika is well explored. Her history and how she seeks to obscure it as she wants “worshippers” not actual connection.

There is a lot going on in Butter that I did not expect to read about in a novel about a female journalist getting an exclusive with a female serial killer. While a lot of it involved issues I’ve experienced or am interested in, and I’m not sure what exactly I expected the read to be like, it was arduous by the end.

Ozma did not have a hard time gaining worshippers while eating whatever she wanted.