The World's Literature in Europe discussion

Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime is set at a Japanese high school. The action happens in the gatherings of different student clubs. Members of the archery club, the orchestra, and the literature club and of the alumni are brought together by a mystery of ten years ago. The novel's sleuths uncover the truth at the story's three-quarter mark. How the rest of the plot will hold my interest will be seen.

Besides the delicious mystery and the extraordinary characters, the book heavily relies on a Osamu Dazai novel. Dazai's No Longer Human echoes boldly and literally in some Mizuki Nomura characters and their circumstances. In "No Longer Human", Yozo was the character who felt shame at his psychological difference from other human beings. In "Book Girl...", the "No Longer Human"-reader Shuji, around whom the mystery mostly revolves, also masks his true feelings and has a friend who sees through his mask.

Having now completely finished it, I regard it as a psychological story. The issues, raised and echoed in the minds of several characters, indicate that shameful feelings of being different are surprisingly shared more often than the affected characters thought. A lot of the characters had to cope with and sometimes hide or disguise a rare ability, trait, or experience. The twisting, mystery plot in Nomura's novel further elucidated Dazai's main character Yozo and Dazai himself.

The book is classified as a "light novel" in Japan -- essentially the Japanese equivalent of "young adult fiction" -- and the series ranked in the top ten of the This Light Novel Is Amazing poll five years in a row. Since light novels are aimed at students still learning kanji and make heavy use of furigana (glosses that give the reading in kana) they're very popular with people learning Japanese, and there are a number of websites where students share their own translations.

One obvious difference between light novels and Western YA fiction is the content. While bad things happen to the protagonists in books like The Hunger Games, they're generally external threats and the hero(ine)s are protected from having to do anything bad themselves. Characters as screwed up as Chia or Konoha rarely appear, and certainly not as the characters readers are supposed to identify with.

The archery club alumni seemed older than the high schoolers. Manabe was even designated 'Mister', and the others were Shuji's friends from a decade ago. By contrast, U.S.A. high school alumni seem less involved in their former high school, moving on toward higher education and busy careers.

Another observation was that the scenes magnified Takeda's and other characters thoughts and consequent acts, which were only wondered or gossiped about by other students and were entirely looked past by school personnel, parents, etc. Those onlookers had no idea of the main characters' thoughts and feelings. The whole story occurred within the small circle of characters.

The story comments about literature's effects on imagination and about Dazai's sketch on human nature and society.