Piercing

by Ryū Murakami, Ralph McCarthy (Translator)

Welcome to Tokyo – the side the tourists don’t see

A pulsating psycho-thriller from Ryu Murakami, author of In the Miso Soup

A renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami; a musician, filmmaker (Tokyo Decadence), TV personality, and award-winning author; has gained a cult following in the West. His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, won Japan's most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies, and his most recent psychosexual thriller, In the Miso Soup, gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination. In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Japan, Japanese Literature, Thriller, Asia, Mystery

185 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is not related to Haruki Murakami or Takashi Murakami.

Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.

Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.

Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.

Reviews

[Alex.andthebooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ta książka to przeżycie

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could never be a nurse or a doctor or a paramedic. Thank GOD for those people, because they were born with a strength that I lack. The sight of blood, gore, bone, vomit, and any number of other bodily excretions, well, they make me lightheaded, wobbly-kneed. Don't get me started on the thought of parasites. Worms, they will be the death of me. Same with black flies (grown-up maggots!). In short, I'm a wimp.

I'm not wimpish when it comes to my literature, though. I love ruthless books, books that go places, sometimes deep and dark, sometimes extreme. They aren't frigid, these books. They don't employ restraint or propriety. They often disturb, chill, shock. They make my heart seize up a little, and I breathe, "YES" on the shaky exhale.

But this book.

It made me feel physically ill. It reminded me of the wimp I am when I'm in a hospital. Of how when I see blood, the edges become black as my consciousness threatens to slip away. The violence in this book forced me regularly to turn from the pages for a reprieve. But then I returned....

I have to laugh at myself. What did I expect, anyway? The book's back cover explains that the main character has a visceral desire to stab his sleeping infant with an ice pick! Thankfully, he doesn't do it, but his way of avoiding it puts him in a completely different situation. A situation with an S&M prostitute who is every bit as psychologically scarred as he is, and who desires to receive and inflict pain as much as he does. It is terrifying to see the extreme effects of their childhood trauma. It scared the shit out of me.

Theirs is a psychotic understanding hopefully far too extreme for most readers to easily comprehend, but it does show how our damage can't help but leak out in harmful ways. Perhaps our ways don't result in a trip to the E.R., but they can wreak havoc all the same.

Achilles' tendons. A Swiss Army knife. A can opener. An ice pick. An eye in its crimson world.

God, we're a fucked up people.

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seriously perturbed about a rash of late-night impulses to murder his newborn child with an ice pick, Tokyo businessman Kawashima Masayuki decides that the only sensible thing to do is to murder a random prostitute instead. But even with all his careful preparations, which Kawashima painstakingly scribbles into a notebook, the last thing that our everyman hero expects is that his intended victim is just as deranged and volatile a freak as himself.

Sanada Chiaki is a S&M call girl in her early twenties who has been suffering a sexual dry spell after a strand of unsatisfying boyfriends. When not lobotomizing herself on pharmaceuticals, Chiaki passes the time transferring the all-consuming inner turmoil of her deeply troubled past into acts of self-mutilation and occasional bodily harm to others.

Piercing is a pithy and nasty novel with the structure and pacing of a shock-thriller until the narrative derails completely into a twisted romance (of sorts) between two psychotic, toxic personalities. After a deceivingly cursory set-up, the book shifts gears and the last hundred pages, which - in a single chapter - relates Kawashima and Chiaki's eventful night together, moves at some serious fucked-up velocity. And while bleak and certainly not for the weak of stomach, there is a mean-spirited streak of subtle gallows humor that penetrates the often erroneous interior dialogues of the novel's two leads, giving the novel dramatic heft as a disturbing satirical peep show into the psychogeography of the give and take and take and take that we call relationships.

[spillingthematcha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo intrygująca, trzymająca w dziwnym napięciu historia. Złożona i wspaniale napisana. A o zakończeniu myślę do tej pory.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ryu Murakami is an expert on the high art of Japanese pulp - what's not to love? In this twisted thriller, two psychologically damaged characters are caught in a double standoff: They are fighting each other, and they are fighting the urge to self-destruct. And you could even make the case that the young father and the S/M sex worker aren't the only ones in the room, as they both suffer from out-of-body experiences caused by trauma and are haunted by their former tormentors - this novel has multiple layers, one creepier than the other.

Short intro to the story: Kawashima Masayuki is afraid he might hurt his own baby: Still terrorized by the abuse he endured from his mentally ill mother, he fights the impulse to stab his Infant with an ice pick - and he decides that in order to prevent this, he should stab a sex worker instead. But he didn't anticipate what this particular sex worker has in store for him...

This book is wild, scary, and thrilling - a typical Ryu Murakami (and while I also love Haruki, I bet an unassuming reader who picks up this novel because he happened to confuse the two will be scarred for life! :-)). I'm on my way to become a Ryu completist, and I already have two more of his books on my bedside table: From the Fatherland, with Love and Popular Hits of the Showa Era.

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The intersection of two very disturbed individuals exorcizes the reader's curiosity of how far a dangerous situation will go. Damaging childhood experiences and the resulting psychoses that drive each character's actions twist this novel upside down and through a warped looking-glass. This was my first novel by Ryu Murakami, and I look forward to my next foray into his dark recesses.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pain is collaborative. It has to be both inflicted and acknowledged, or it doesn't count. Ryu Murakami, the "aging enfant terrible of Japan," is interested in both. His work is marked by graphic sex and shocking violence. For some reason I saw the movie adaptation of his Audition and I'm all set with piano wire now.


Piano wire: it's not just for whatever it's supposed to be for!

The thing with relationships is that they constitute an agreement to inflict your damage on each other, right? "I am fucked up and you're going to catch it, and you are fucked up and I'm going to catch it." And with any luck, you find someone who wants that kind of damage. Some people want to be controlled, some people want to control. Some people want to have big screaming fights, some people want more passive aggression in their lives. Romance is just matching damage. That's all we're talking about here in Piercing. I mean, my personal damage is, like, I make too many lists? And these people are both dangerously insane, so the scale is different. But still, basically same thing. I have this pain to give. I'd like it accepted. Acknowledged.

This is an icky thing to say! It's a pitch dark view of relationships. But there is a little bit of truth to it, isn't there? I thought about my marriage. It's perfect and my wife is my best friend and I love her all the way. But there's....there's not none of this, friend. There's a little damage.


Ryu Murakami looking enfant terrible-y

One of the things you can do with fiction is take a human truth and blow it up to super dramatic size. It's what Bret Easton Ellis was up to in American Psycho and it's what Ryu Murakami is up to here, just as effectively. When writers go all the way into the dark, like Murakami does, they can force you to confront aspects of your own humanity that you'd maybe not always prefer to acknowledge. I think there's value in that.

Anyway, the very first image in Piercing is of a peacefully sleeping child, with his father standing over her crib in the night holding an ice pick up to her cheek. He's wondering what he can do to keep himself from stabbing her. He decides to murder a hooker instead, as one does. The hooker and he form a certain sort of relationship. Damage ensues! I accept it.

[Repellent Boy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo que ocurre siempre con Ryu Murakami, es que sabes que va a ser una experiencia inolvidable. Peculiar, diferente y, por supuesto, no apto para todos los estómagos. Te pone los nervios a flor de piel. Tardé, literalmente, una hora en leer las últimas doce páginas, por culpa de lo tenso que estaba siendo el final.

Kawashima lleva diez días despertando entre sudores, le obsesiona una cosa: el miedo a apuñalar con un punzón a su bebé de cuatro meses. Después de mucho pensar, tomará una desición que lo ayude a alejar esos pensamientos de su mente.

Esta sinopsis, bastante extremista, sirve al autor para adentrarse en la mente humana. Vamos a encontrarnos con dos personajes heridos, maltratados por la vida y por diferentes personas, que solo se sienten vivos a través del dolor. A veces, causándolo a otros, otras veces siendo recibido por sus propios cuerpos. Su manera más natural de expresión pasa a través del dolor.

Creo que bajo esta premisa se levanta un debate muy interesante, que no es otro que: ¿la persona maltratada en su más tierna infancia se rompe de tal manera para toda la vida, que acaba por convertirse en aquello de lo que huye? ¿O es que su mente jamás se separa del dominio de esas personas que los perjudicaron, y siempre actuan según su mandato? Un debate super interesante el que propone esta novela.

Como he dicho, no podría recomendársela a todo el mundo, porque no es una historia fácil. Ryu Murakami no es un autor fácil, pero a todos los que disfruten de encontrar un autor diferente, como nunca antes has leído, le interesará sus historias.

[Karolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moją przygodę z japońską literaturą zaczęłam od Harukiego, ale chyba z wiekiem jestem bardziej team Ryu. Książka ryje czaszkę. Czyli jest sztosik.

Trigger warning: opisy przemocy. Ale jeśli jesteście na to gotowi/gotowe, to totalne polecanko.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early on into this, there is a scene where the central male character, Kawashima, is standing over his daughter's crib holding an ice pick. Knowing how Ryu Murakami likes blood and torture and nasty stuff in his novels, for a second I seriously thought to myself - 'Oh fuck! ... no way ... there is just no way. He couldn't. Could he? Thankfully, nothing happens. It's more like a test against himself.

No sooner had I quickly turned my thoughts away from the image of a baby with multiple stab wounds, another image had entered my head just as fast. Someone who knows a thing or two about using an ice pick in non-ice pickings ways - Sharon Stone's Catherine Tramell.
In fact, lo and behold, only a few pages pages later, Kawashima and his wife, Yoko, are watching Basic Instinct!

Piercing reads like a Lynchian S&M nightmare, that might not have had the extreme graphic nature of some of his other novels, but it certainly created a sinister feeling of unease the whole way through. Like his namesake, Haruki, Ryu takes the influence of western popular culture upon the Japanese, and nods towards the classic Hollywood psychological horror film. (Just found out this was adapted for the screen back in 2018, starring Christopher Abbott & Mia Wasikowska)

The novel deals with insecurities of the present, and demons from the past, as both Kawashima, and the prostitute he hires, Chiaki - who Kawashima chillingly describes wanting to slice through her Achilles tendons just to see what it sounds like, came from similar childhood backgrounds of suffering. There were parts when I winced, and others that I actually found quite sad. It's short enough to read in one go, and not the sort of thing you'd want to drag out. Didn't find it as creepy as Audition, but on the whole it wasn't bad.

[Brandon Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one a lot more than Audition!! Piercing is the story of two very broken people having a completely unforgettable night.

This one was WAYYY more unnerving and stress inducing throughout. Maybe a bit less gory, but still had some graphic imagery.

[zocharett Kolińska · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mam mieszane odczucia. Sam zamysł i problematyka są bardzo ciekawe, ale to chyba ta forma mi nie odpowiada. Z jednej strony byłam ciekawa, dokąd to pójdzie. Z drugiej nie mogłam się doczekać końca, żeby już wyjść z tego świata. Mam wrażenie, że to taka książka, której szczegóły bardzo szybko zapomnę.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was intrigued and then all at once I was bored. The dissociative out-of-body feeling that both of the main characters experience was also a trait used by Murakami in My Annihilation to explain the main character’s ability to endure or inflict pain so it felt repetitive and like a crutch or placeholder rather than a useful explanation of each character’s violent urges. Also both protags had horrific childhoods, full of abuse, and for once I’d love to read a splashy thriller where the protagonist was just a regular joe with a happy home life as a child. The tension dropped for me considerably after the baby was no longer in the picture as the likeliest next ice pick victim and I’m left to ponder why I felt more upset about the bunny’s fate than any human character’s fate. It’s my 4th Murakami book so I guess he’s doing something that interests me. I think it’s these novels’ straightforward simplicity, a recurring strength in all the books I’ve read, as well as what I perceive as the author’s complete willingness to write implausibly if it’s the fastest way to serve his purpose. I admire that.

[shubiektywnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ta książka powoduje fizyczny dyskomfort. Jednocześnie obserwacja starcia dwóch skrzywionych psychik na małej przestrzeni podsycona tragikomiczną omyłką była niezwykle fascynująca. Chyba nigdy nie czytałam tak plastycznych opisów zmian stanów psychicznych i krzywd doznanych i zamierzonych. Książka tylko dla ludzi o mocnych nerwach.

[Tomasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nie jestem mocno wyczulony na opisy przemocy, ale tutaj miejscami było naprawdę bardzo mocno, zwłaszcza w kilku konkretnych przypadkach, które okazały się być moim triggerem. Ciekawa historia, ale dla mnie to bardziej powieść psychologiczna niż thriller.

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 'other Murakami' comes out with a genuinely original piece of fiction. A man with a perfect life, Kawashima, has a dark side that he seeks to quench by taking some time off of work and killing a woman… preferably a prostitute. Chiaki, a psychotic woman that revels in self harm and has serious rage issues, decides it's time to earn some money so accepts an S&M client. The two psychotics are then destined to meet with two markedly different agendas and ways of reading situations and people. Best described in the words of the Times Literary Supplement - 'a smart and snappy psychosexual thriller'. 7 out of 12

[rozalka · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75/5 ta ksiazka byla BARDZO dziwna, chyba najdziwniejsza ze wszystkich, ktore przeczytalam do tej pory. Napisze to tak bardzo kolokwialnie, ale czulam się troche jakbym czytala slabego pornola z watkiem psychologicznym XDD jednak poslowie autora mnie bardzo rozwalilo, chcialabym poznac pełną historie Chiaki Sanady. Czytajac o tych wszystkich torturach, stosowanych przez rodzica na dziecku, lub o rzeczach ktore glowny bohater sobie marzył, co zrobi swojej ofiarze, powodowaly we mnie straszny dyskomfort. Nie polecilabym tej ksiazki komus o slabych nerwach.

[prozaczytana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bardzo dziwna i mocna książka, która pokazuje, jak tragiczne przeżycia w dzieciństwie wpływają na psychikę w dorosłym życiu. Przemoc rodzi przemoc, a skrzywdzonych ludzi ciągnie do innych skrzywdzonych ludzi.

"Piercing" czytałam z niesłabnącym zainteresowaniem - liczyłam na dobitny finał godny całości i niestety przeliczyłam się. Niesamowicie nie lubię otwartych zakończeń, a ta historia aż prosi się o coś mocnego.. No, tutaj Ryu Murakami się nie popisał. Ale opowieść interesująca w swojej dziwaczności.

[Karolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie umiem ubrać w słowa fenomenu Ryu Murakamiego. Jego książki są pełne przemocy, ale są przy tym napisane pięknym językiem. Momentami zasłaniam oczy, kiedy je czytam, żeby potem podkreślać całe fragmenty.

"Piercing" to książka o bólu, o nadużywaniu zaufania, o przemocy - głównie ze strony bliskich. O traumie. O demonach, które zostają w nas na zawsze, gdy oprawcami okażą się np rodzice.

Niezwykle szanuję Murakamiego za to, że nie boi pisać się o wszystkim, co mroczne, o rzeczach, o których wolelibyśmy nie wiedzieć. O paranojach. O myślach, których chcemy się pozbyć. O bólu, który zadajemy sobie sami i tym, którego wolimy nie czuć, nawet jeśli chwilę wcześniej zwalał nas z nóg.

Jego książki pokazują, że Japonia to nie tylko zen, kobiety w kimonach i czarki herbaty. To nie tylko efemeryczność, inspiracje poezją i naturą. To także świat prostytutek, gangów, morderców, rodziców maltretujących swoje dzieci, ludzi, którzy nie potrafią się odnaleźć w świecie, bezdomnych, chorych, i tak dalej...

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Piercing by Ryū Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Blurb: In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children. Piercing is set in Tokyo and follows Kawashima Masayuki trying to come to terms with his overwhelming desire to stab his infant child with an Ice Pick. He resolves to divert the impulse into an unsuspecting prostitute. However as he begins to execute his meticulous crime everything, including his past, begins to unravel.

Thoughts: This was a seriously dark read. I'm not sure if you can really call Piercing an enjoyable read in the traditional sense but as with my previous Ryu Murakami experience this trip in to the world of two damaged little fuckers was incredibly satisfying.

"Ten nights ago. He was in the bathtub with the baby, having just finished washing her. He handed her over to Yoko, who was waiting with a fluffy bath towel, and then he leaned back in the tub, leaving the pebbled-glass shower door partially open. Yoko was murmuring to the baby as she dried her, and he was aware of himself smiling at them. And then, with no prelude or warning, a thought came percolating up into his brain and he felt the muscles of his cheeks twitch and freeze.

'I wouldn’t ever stab that baby with an ice pick, would I?' "

The content is at times quite disturbing in it's descriptions of physical torture but possibly even more disturbing is the empathy and compassion you find yourself feeling for these two people who are clearly not entirely sane. Whilst this literary descent in to a nightmare world has the potential to be gore-filled the prose is actually restrained, using it's language sparingly to convey maximum effect and grim imagery. This is horror but not as we ordinarily consider it.

The writing of The Other Murakami is something wonderful to immerse yourself in and so very impressive for that very reason. Any moment I had to stop reading I found myself constantly thinking about the characters and the situation they were in, almost desperate to go back to it and find out what would happen.

“In heated rooms, he often felt the outlines of his body, the border between him and the external world, grow disturbingly fuzzy.”

It's a nerve shredding, adrenaline rush of a novel that leaves you turning the page in eager anticipation and whilst I cannot recommend this for everyone because of the hard to swallow content I feel it is something that deserves to be read by anyone not easily offended.

World cinema fans will know what it is like to experience the dark imagination of Ryu Murakami already; he is the author of Audition, the novel that Takashi Miike adapted for his shocking and disturbing movie of the same name, and whilst Piercing is not at that same level it still packs a real punch on multiple levels. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking to explore their literary boundaries and suggest following it up with the even more impressive In The Miso Soup.

Further Viewing Suggestions:
Audition
American Psycho
Lost Highway

Additional Reading:
In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
Out by Natsuo Kirino
Requiem For A Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.

Originally posted at blahblahblahgay

[GD · Rating 1 out of 5]

I actually like Ryu Murakami most of the time, but this book was just, like, a parody of himself. Starts out with a guy messing around with his baby's cheek with an ice pick while his wife is sleeping behind him, thinking how nice a guy he is for not killing the baby, then he decides he needs to stab the ice pick into some woman's stomach, then decides on top of that he needs to know first hand if a sliced Achilles tendon really makes a loud pop, then gets a love hotel and writes all this down in a notebook and calls a special massage girl, but she happens to also be fucked up and stabs herself in the leg repeatedly with a pair of small scissors, they go to the hospital to get stitched up, then to her apartment. She tries to put him to sleep with GHB or something like that, but before he sleeps he manages to tie her up with electrical cord, then he passes out, she gets out of the cord, cleans up, and the guy wakes up and leaves.

There, I just told you the entire book.

So cliché, that Japanese stereotype of senseless, creepy violence, like the Guinea Pig movies, etc. This was a big turd of a book.

[Wasee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memories aren't like words; they're soft and gooey. Covered with a sticky slime, like a penis after sex, or a vagina when you menstruate, and shaped like tadpoles or tiny watersnakes. When these sleeping memories are awakened, they begin to squirm and then swim, slowly at first but gradually faster, up to the surface. And once they get there, your senses shut down.

[Zizeloni · Rating 4 out of 5]

A typical Rut Murakami book, kind of psycho, kind of psychological thriller about an everyday man deciding to murder someone. It was good, but if I had to choose, I liked In the Miso Soup better.

[Kelly| Just Another Horror Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Murakami and I wasn’t disappointed. If you’re into dark stuff and don’t get grossed out easily this books is for you. I’ll definitely be reading more of his work.

[Aaron Anstett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This profoundly disturbing and tension-filled short novel about an encounter between two broken people I found very gripping, though I don't know that I'd read it again.

[Marta Demianiuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gdyby to nie były Tajfuny, pewnie bym po ten tytuł nie sięgnęła. Ale niczego nie żałuję, chociaż momentami czułam się przygnieciona aż do ziemi tą historią. Ciężką, a jednocześnie fascynującą.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

FUCK this book. I fucking hate this. I wanna get up and burn it right fucking now. The plot is so fucking stupid. The characters are unbearable. The writing is even worse than the plot and the chracters. You can't use TWO first person p.o.v. silmutaneously! I've seen 13 year old wattpader in 2015 writing one direction adopted me fanfic that was better than this. Oh my fucking god.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este vendría a ser mi tercer libro de Ryū Murakami y lo disfruté un montón, como siempre. Los chicos de las taquillas continúa siendo el mejor, debido a su densidad y longitud en todos los aspectos posibles, pero quizás me atrevería a decir que este me perturbó un poco más. Hay algo en la oscuridad de estos personajes que hizo que se sintiera todo mucho más tétrico y turbio, al mismo tiempo que divertido y emocionante. Es una historia corta pero se toma su tiempo, y cuando acelera sí que lo hace. Me encanta cómo escribe este señor, es muy metódico pero también deja fluir la psiquis de los personajes y lo bizarro de la historia con mucha naturalidad.

[Ola | nawyk czytania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread w 🎧 po roku i wrażenia takie same:

06.07.2024
Niesamowicie trzymająca w napięciu od samego początku do ostatniej linijki. Przeszywająca, bolesna, trudna. To było niemożliwe do zapomnienia doświadczenie literackie 😳

[Haiiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tôi cố suy nghĩ về cuốn sách trong khoảng gần một tiếng đồng hồ vốn dành riêng cho việc nghe file nhạc chẳng ai khác nghe được ngoài mình, cuốc bộ quãng đường hơn 4km và vênh mặt nhìn trời nhìn đất... Kết quả là không nghĩ được gì cả, không tiến triển được một chút nào, không cắt nghĩa được bất cứ một ý gì và không đặt tên được bất cứ một xúc cảm cá nhân nào dành cho nó. Như thể ở dưới một cái giếng khoan bốn bề tối tăm, cố gắng lần mò để trèo lên rồi nhận ra xung quanh trơn tuột chả có cái khấc nào để nhét chân tay vào cả.
Bối cảnh của Xuyên thấu thật chật hẹp. Có vẻ đó là điều kiện cần thiết để Ryu Murakami ép cho câu chuyện tuôn ra. Và quả thật là tôi thấy nó tuôn ra xối xả, như là không gì có thể chặn lại được dòng chảy của nó. Cách kể chuyện nghĩ có vẻ rối loạn khi Murakami cứ cho góc nhìn đổi liên tục từ Kawashima sang Chiaki trong các đoạn nối tiếp (thậm chí cả trong cùng một đoạn), nhưng thực tế lại chỉ ra rằng việc đọc của tôi chẳng bị phá bĩnh lấy một chút. Cuốn sách cứ nhịp nhàng, buồn bã và đáng sợ như một bản theme trong phim của Park Chan Wook, và người đọc cứ như bị dính bùa bị dắt đi mãi thôi dù muốn dù không muốn.
Chính xác là có những đoạn buồn cười, dẫu ngôn ngữ thì không. Mà chỉ những lúc đấy thì tôi mới thương nhân vật - hai đứa trẻ có tuổi thơ không yên bình đành phải lớn lên với tâm hồn khiếm khuyết. Còn đâu thì tôi chỉ thấy gánh nặng đè trĩu trên vai nước Nhật khi nó chứa trong mình những con người dạng như thế: một kẻ nói về chuyện lên kế hoạch giết chết một người phụ nữ vô tội xa lạ như nói về một trò chơi điện tử vô hại, và một người chẳng mảy may nghĩ ngợi gì khi hành hạ thể xác của chính mình. Đúng là bó tay (theo netizen thế hệ đầu) và cạn lời (theo netizen ngày nay).
Một cái kết ném người ta vào hàng đống những thắc mắc mà chắc chắn chỉ còn có thể tự mình giải đáp bằng trí tưởng tượng. Bất chấp hiện thực rằng não tôi hầu như không chịu hằn chút nếp nhăn nào để cho việc cảm thấy deep trôi chảy hơn, Xuyên thấu vẫn móc tôi lơ lửng vào những dấu hỏi. Rồi để tôi chết dí ở đó, Ryu Murakami đặt dấu chấm hết bài.