砂糖菓子の弾丸は打ち抜けない
Summary
Japanese
その日、兄とあたしは、必死に山を登っていた。見つけたくない「あるもの」を見つけてしまうために。あたし=中学生の山田なぎさは、子供という境遇に絶望し、一刻も早く社会に出て、お金という“実弾”を手にするべく、自衛官を志望していた。そんななぎさに、都会からの転校生、海野藻屑は何かと絡んでくる。嘘つきで残酷だが、どこか魅力的な藻屑となぎさは序々に親しくなっていく。だが、藻屑は日夜、父からの暴力に曝されており、ある日―。直木賞作家がおくる、切実な痛みに満ちた青春文学。
English
Nagisa Yamada is a bored teenager who finds everyday life extremely unappealing – thus she plans on joining a Military School as soon as possible.
A strange new student named Umino Mokuzu, who claims to be a mermaid, transfers into Nagisa’s school and, much to our heroine’s bewilderment, soon begins to follow her around incessantly.
Initially, an annoyed and discomfited Nagisa strives to avoid any encounters with Mokuzu. But she soon begins to comprehend the pain and sadness concealed beneath this strange girl’s cheerful and carefree demeanour.
Availability
Personal Opinion
I stumbled across this light novel by stumbling across its manga adaption, actually. The manga was fantastic, had really great story arc and amazing character development and exploration.
As for why in the book club, I felt like it was very different from a lot of the other nominations already there (at least the ones I’ve caught up on), so it would make for an interested addition. It’s a dark psychological thriller. It’s a very good conversation starter to say the least, and would make for good discussion material outside of Japanese.
I never did any research as to whether the manga followed its source material, so I can’t say much about what’s going to be in the book, but the author is also wrote the manga, so I have high hopes.
If I assume they are quite similar, I should mention that there are potentially triggering scenes in there. I found it was done very tastefully, but it does deal with quite heavy topics, such as (if you don’t care, don’t read this, since it might count as spoilers) child abuse and severe violence.
I wasn’t sure if this is okay as a nomination because of the above paragraph, but I figured I’d post it anyway and if not, it can be taken down or no one will vote for it, which is also fine.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- Quite short (about 200 pages)
- Very different from Kino (variety)
- Makes you think and gets you emotionally invested
- Good character study
Cons
- Potentially triggering with a bit of gore (very necessary for plot and not overdone though)
- Very different from Kino (new vocabulary?)
Pictures
Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?
- No effort at all
- Minimal effort
- Just right
- Challenging
- Impossible, even with everyone’s help
- I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)
0 voters