I'm not a fan of Honobu Yonezawa, I avoid his popular 'teenage detective manga/novel series' like plague (in my mind, nothing is more ridiculous than a 'detective novel' with no one getting killed), but this short story collection of Mr. Yonezawa: "The Feast of the Illusory Lambs" completely blows me away.
The short stories all revolve around a book club formed by highly educated young women from privileged families...but of course the book club is more than just a group of privileged girls sitting around to read books peacefully, the more you read the more you can tell there's something deeper going on with the club and its members.
Each short story tells a different tale about a club member, and there're a lot of description about those young mistresses and their relationships with their maid servants (mostly of the same age), there're different mysteries in each of the story, and almost all of them are imaginative, frightening, twisted and Gothic to the bone. I equally enjoy how legendary authors such as Poe, Edogawa Rampo, Yumeno Kyūsaku, Stanley Ellin etc are referred in different tales.
Strongly recommend to anyone who enjoys their reading material elegant, dark and Gothic and with highly surprising twists.
A rather strange and truly macabre anthology that sort of draws you in - compact yet effective writing. The stories are united through the Babylon Book Club - good to read in order so that the themes permeate across and conclude at the end.
So this book is all about Psychopath Killer. Yes, Honobu Yonezawa is the author of Hyouka, which is peaceful, but after reading more and more his novel I found him quite like writing about Psychopath. So please be aware this book is not for peace seeker
This is my first time to read works by Honobu Yonezawa. I am usually not a big fan of a short story, but surprise, surprise! These are not bad at all. He successfully created a gothic atmosphere with the story setting and using old-fashioned talking style. Each ending is quite beautiful. I really enjoyed them.