A story of decay… decay of the human nature. A story about how society and other people can influence one’s life and make them turn into a monster. A story about childhood in the Japanese society and in one of the most prestigious schools there. A story about prostitution and a story about murder. That’s what the author lays in front of our eyes.
Our storyteller is a Japanese woman in her forties, who has always lived in her sister Yuriko’s shadow. Hating her sister for the extreme beauty she possessed, she had always considered her to be a monster and always tried to be nothing like her. Turning into prostitution at a very early age, Yuriko ends up murdered by a Chinese man, who came to work illegally in Japan.
We also have Kazue’s story, a girl who has been taught that all you need to do is try your best and you can accomplish anything you want to. But this disillusion turned her into a monster who thought that by being both a career woman and a prostitute made her better than any other woman out there. She ends up being murdered by the same man who killed Yuriko.
We witness the decay of these people. We witness their actions and emotions in a cruel reality.
Grotesque is a novel that can really make you wonder. It makes you wonder about how your actions can influence someone’s life and how your decisions and choices can influence your own life. It makes you wonder about your dreams and hopes. What ever happened to them? Every one of us had dreams, we all have goals, hopes for a better life, but in the end, how many of us will actually accomplish them? How many of us can say that they had all their dreams come true? Every human being starts their life in the same way…what makes us who we are today?
Have you ever wondered where you would have been if you had made a different choice at some point in your life? There are many things we cannot control, that would change our lives, but it’s up to us to try our best to have the life we want and not the one decided by society or any other person.
I started rambling..sorry, but these are the kind of thoughts reading Grotesque had me thinking.
