変な家 🏠 🔍 (IBC)・Week 9

変な家 :house: :mag:
Intermediate Book Club
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Week 9 28 September 2024
End page 224
End % 87.2
End phrase どうか、よろしくお願いいたします
Next starting phrase 喜江さんは、ソファの上に…
Pages 18
Starting location 1530
Location count 267
Last week Week 8
Next week Week 10

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3 Likes

Here is the family tree for the descendants of 片淵嘉永(かえい)up to kindle location 1745. The graphs have been done with ‘gramps’ on Linux.

I omitted Fumino’s nephew a.k.a. Yuzuki’s second husband, because we know nothing about his parents.

Here is another one, featuring even more people:

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I just reached the part where the letter continues. I have to admit I had to go back to reread the first part of the letter because I had completely forgotten what was in it and I even didn’t remember who it was from anymore! :sweat_smile: I guess all the shocking revelations from last week completely overshadowed it :smile:

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Thank you, that’s so useful for keeping track of this incest-ridden bunch of nutjobs whose names I keep forgetting.

Minor spoiler from the beginning of the chapter

I’m glad I saw this right at the beginning. The description of Aunt Misaki’s pregnancy made me think it was Youichi at first, and then I got confused when Yoshie called him destined to become the guardian. Without this handy family tree, I might still be stuck rereading that confusing paragraph to find something about the younger brother.

I’m two thirds through this chapter, but my iPad battery gave out in the middle of the most info-dense part of the infodump :face_exhaling:.

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fun facts:

We learn a lot of names of persons who appear only once in the book, but the first name of Yuzuki’s father is never mentioned, although he plays an important role in the story. (Or did I miss something?)

Some of the names are mentioned in hiragana only at first, and only much later in kanji.

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thanks - this is super helpful!

tiny thing
I think that 宗一郎 is そういちろう

(one of the few that I actually remember the reading for…)

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I don’t think the reading is provided in the book but that’s how I read it too.

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You are right, the hiragana is given at kindle location 1363. I corrected it in the graphs.

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It was definitely mentioned somewhere, otherwise I wouldn’t have known how to pronounce it.

Btw, I also don’t think we got the name of Yuzuki’s father yet @2000kanji .

Misaki and Kimihiko

Another thing I kind of expected but didn’t get was family background info on Aunt Misaki. Last week, Yoshie speculated that No Left Hand Syndrome is a recessive genetic condition that appeared because of the incestuous nature of great-grandpa’s relationship. So why is Touya born without a left hand if his parents aren’t related? Idk, it’s not that important, maybe it’s caused by the same thing in the water in the ancient Katabuchi house that also causes the oddly specific crazy.

The...plot...for lack of a better work

Is it just me, or does this story have more holes than a honeycomb? I get fatigued just thinking about listing all the things that didn’t really convince me in this chapter, so maybe I’ll just wait till the end. Maybe some things will be patched over. I really hope next week is not going to be a giant infodump like the last two. Like @simias said last week, it’s not really working for me, either.

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I think I must have missed/forgotten it then, because I ended up looking it up and fortunately there seems to be only one common reading for this name:

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Another question on the plot:

The first ‘ceremony of the left hand’ takes place in 2016, as we learn in much detail. The rules specify that while the child is between 10 and 13 years old, the ceremony has to be performed every year. So what about 2017 and 2018? In 2017 Hiroto is born, in 2018 the family moves to Tokyo (paid by the greatest fans of the ceremony), but nobody talks about the due ceremonies.

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The victims of the ceremony

I also found this a confusing hole in the story in Keita’s letter. For a while, I actually suspected that he and Ayano were just trying to lure in Yuziki, because she’s a potential victim. This might have somewhat explained the XXL-sized holes in his story, such as the missing details about the other two victims, and the overly convenient nature of Miyae’s death. But it would raise other questions, like why they are involving Yoshie, and anyway since Keita ended up turning against grandpa in a very proveable way, I guess that’s not it. So, your guess is as good as mine.

And speaking of the ceremony, I still didn’t see an explanation of what exactly happened to the twins. Did they kill the 3 children from the branch family who died suspiciously early, and if so, why wasn’t there a fourth victim? At first, this made me believe that the rules somehow meant the murder kid only had to kill 3 people and could do so at any time during the period between their 10-13th year of age, but I reread the rules, and they seem to specify that there has to be one victim per year, so I’m still stumped.

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Did I miss it? I couldn’t find the reading for 清次, the slightly scary cousin
I thought it was せいじ but Kanshudo lists きよじ and きよつぐ
as other readings…

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Yeah this one I don’t think is in the book (unless I missed it too) and there are a bunch of possible readings. I go with きょじ myself because it’s easier to remember…

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The victims of the ceremony

I really think there are only supposed to be three murders. I think in that part the book was quite specific that 志津子 wanted to get rid of three inconvenient heirs, so three murders makes sense. So I really think we should interpret 十三歳になるまで、一年に一度 as exclusive the thirteenth year. And yes, I do think it was implied that the twins committed those three murders.

However (just to contradict myself :sweat_smile:), the book is definitely not clear on it, because in his letter 慶太 says あと三回も繰り返さなくてはいけないのです, so that sounds like three more times… :crazy_face:

My impressions

I guess my suspension of disbelief is a lot more flexible than the rest of you, because I actually quite enjoyed reading 慶太’s letter :sweat_smile: But, yeah, it’s not a plot to take seriously, of course. None of this is even remotely realistic :joy:

I thought it had a nice arc to it going from “yay, the young generation has a plan to break the tradition” to “oh no, バレた”. I liked how the “family” was like “we want to specify the floor plan” (with results that demonstrate ever more clearly how much is wrong with these people) and how the nephew was like “Yeah, I was onto you guys the whole time, but as long as I was getting paid I didn’t care. But now you messed up.”

I must admit I completely glossed over the fact that he didn’t say anything at all about the second (and third?) victims that they had to fake, but yeah, there must have been at least one before they moved. Maybe his whole passage about repeating it three times was actually a very short recap to say that they did do it several times and I guess he might not want to go into all the details because it’s not exactly something to be proud of… but then why go into so much detail about the first one :smile:

And yeah, I have to admit that I also felt that 宮江’s death was way too convenient. That’s where my disbelief also drew the line :smile:

5 Likes

In my bookwalker version it’s at 84% and it’s きよつぐ. It’s where 善江 first mentions his name when she tells them about how he “offered” to marry her wasn’t really married to her. (Edit: I misread that.)

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How do I keep missing those? I’ll have to check my paper version to see if they’re actually there. And even if they are I’ll pretend they’re not so that I don’t sound like an idiot.

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hello darkness my old friend

Me looking ahead to see where the end of this week sections falls and seeing nothing but what looks to be dense infodump in the interval.

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By the way I don’t think I’m crazy, as far as I recall this is the first time the 兄妹 names are mentioned and there’s no furigana in my edition (this is from last week):

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Thanks! I missed it. It is in the kindle at the first mention of him)

actually, I read it that 義江 had told 柚木 that 清次 was her second husband, but actually he was just there to watch over her and make sure she didn’t go to the police. (I hadn’t realised that this was the same guy who watches the 姉 later).

1 Like