Piercing

From Publishers Weekly In this short, tense and brutally eloquent thriller from Japanese author Murakami ( In the Miso Soup ), Kawashima Masayuki, a young urban professional, faces the terrible fear he will stab his baby daughter, Rie, just as he once stabbed the stripper he lived with when he was 19. He decides killing a young prostitute will alleviate the building pressure inside him and protect both Rie and his sweet wife, Yoko. He plans everything meticulously, but what he doesn't bargain for is that his intended victim, Sanada Chiaki, an s&m worker, is as disturbed as he is. During their appointment, Chiaki experiences a ''Nightmare'' episode that results in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse. Murakami doesn't waste a word or a movement in this near-haiku of a tale that's breathless with anxiety and fraught with pain. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Kawashima survived a hideously abusive childhood and, as isn't unusual in such cases, bears the scars. Voices in his head, accompanied by garish images, urge him to re-create his stabbing, when a teenager, of the stripper who was his brutal mother. Because ''only voices and images from the external world could neutralize those from inside,'' Kawashima's greatest fear is not of death but of blindness and deafness. When fantasies of stabbing his infant daughter as she sleeps in her crib start to dominate his consciousness, he lies to his unsuspecting wife, takes a hotel room, and meticulously plots to murder an S&M prostitute--who is petite, so he can more easily overcome her. Certainly not for the squeamish or faint-hearted, Piercing blends a cold-blooded true-crime ambience and unexpected, almost antic humor as best-laid plans go horribly awry when an equally scarred (she's a compulsive cutter) abuse survivor turned S&M prostitute enters the action. Oddly and thoroughly compelling as well as chilling, and neither black comedy nor horror, this is a strangely entertaining novel. Whitney Scott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved A pulsating cult-favorite psycho-thriller from Ryu Murakami, author of In the Miso Soup & soon to be a major motion picture starring Christopher Abbott & Mia Wasikowska *One of Literary Hub's "Ten Works of Literary Horror You Should Read (Even if You Don't Think You Like Horror)"* °°°Kawashima Masayuki is a successful graphic designer living in Tokyo with his loving wife, Yoko, & their baby girl. Outwardly, their lives are a picture of happiness & contentment, but every night while his wife sleeps Kawashima creeds from him bed & watches over the baby’s crib with an ice pick in his hand & an almost visceral desire to use it. One night, as this struggle unfolds once more, Kawashima makes a decision to confront his demons & sets into motion an uncontrollable chain of events seeming to lead inexorably to murder. The follow-up to In the Miso Soup from a cult favorite writer, Piercing confirms Murakami as the master of the psycho thriller—terrifying, sickening, & utterly gripping.In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse & what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other & then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.°°°A renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami—a musician, filmmaker (Tokyo Decadence), TV personality, & award-winning author—has gained a cult following in the West. His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, won Japan’s most coveted literary prize & sold over a million copies, & his most recent psychosexual thriller, In the Miso Soup, gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination.Ralph McCarthy is the translator of 69 & In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami, & two collections of stories by Osamu Dazzai.

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.

Publishers Weekly

In this short, tense and brutally eloquent thriller from Japanese author Murakami (In the Miso Soup), Kawashima Masayuki, a young urban professional, faces the terrible fear he will stab his baby daughter, Rie, just as he once stabbed the stripper he lived with when he was 19. He decides killing a young prostitute will alleviate the building pressure inside him and protect both Rie and his sweet wife, Yoko. He plans everything meticulously, but what he doesn't bargain for is that his intended victim, Sanada Chiaki, an s&m worker, is as disturbed as he is. During their appointment, Chiaki experiences a Nightmare episode that results in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse. Murakami doesn't waste a word or a movement in this near-haiku of a tale that's breathless with anxiety and fraught with pain. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

“Mr. Murakami's novels are filled with entertaining psychopaths.”—The New York TimesA pulsating cult-favorite psycho-thriller, the basis of the major motion picture starring Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska•One of Literary Hub's “Ten Works of Literary Horror You Should Read (Even if You Don't Think You Like Horror)”• Kawashima Masayuki is a successful graphic designer living in Tokyo with his loving wife, Yoko, and their baby girl. Outwardly, their lives are a picture of happiness and contentment, but every night while his wife sleeps Kawashima creeds from him bed and watches over the baby's crib with an ice pick in his hand and an almost visceral desire to use it. One night, as this struggle unfolds once more, Kawashima makes a decision to confront his demons and sets into motion an uncontrollable chain of events seeming to lead inexorably to murder. The follow-up to In the Miso Soup from a cult favorite writer, Piercing confirms Murakami as the master of the psycho thriller—terrifying, sickening, and utterly gripping. Kawashima Masayuki is a successful graphic designer living in Tokyo with his loving wife, Yoko, and their baby girl. Outwardly, their lives are a picture of happiness and contentment, but every night while his wife sleeps Kawashima creeps from his bed and watches over the baby's crib with an ice pick in his hand and an almost visceral desire to use it. One particular night, as this struggle unfolds once more, Kawashima makes a decision to confront his demons, and sets into motion an uncontrollable chain of events seeming to lead inexorably to murder. Kawashima Masayuki is a successful graphic designer living in Tokyo with his loving wife, and their healthy baby girl. Every night, unable to sleep, he creeps from his bed and watches over the baby's crib. But this is no ordinary domestic scene, for on each of those nights, Kawashima has an ice-pick in his hand, and a visceral desire to use it.