Cbr18bingo Friends
I reviewed Asako Yuzuki’s novel Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder a few months ago and was very much struck by her portrayal of Japanese society — the sexism, the fat shaming, the anti-feminist sentiment — as well as by her riveting story-telling and characters. Hooked: A Novel of Obsession is even better, in my opinion. This is a novel about relationships amongst women, the difficulties of making friendships once you’ve moved beyond school, and the impact that patriarchy and sexism have on both friendships and family dynamics. While the central story is about two 30-ish women, Eriko and Shoko, a number of supporting characters’ interactions with them reveal their true personalities and dysfunctions to the reader and to Eriko and Shoko. I didn’t want to put this one down, and I found myself horrified, saddened and ultimately encouraged by this story of female loneliness.
Eriko is 30 and seems to have the perfect life. She is a Tokyo native from an affluent family. She still lives at home with her parents, relying on her mother to take care of food, laundry and other essentials of daily living. Eriko has a good job at a huge international company, working in the food sales division as her father had before her. He was an executive and had traveled extensively for long periods of time before retirement. Eriko is very well educated, having attended an excellent university of her choosing, and she is beautiful. Yet, if she is honest with herself, Eriko is not happy. As much as she acknowledges her need for her parents in order to maintain her lifestyle, she also thinks travel sounds interesting, that getting away from them might be nice, and she does not have, nor has she had since childhood, a best friend. Eriko gets to work extra early every morning in order to have time to herself and her indulgences: junk food from a corner store and reading her favorite blog: “The Diary of Hallie B., The World’s Worst Wife.”
“Hallie B.” is Shoko, a married 30-year-old living in Tokyo. She is in many ways the opposite of Eriko. Shoko grew up in the sticks, in a cold mountainous area. She was apathetic about school and didn’t have much ambition other than to get away from her family. Shoko’s mother left her father and the three children when Shoko was young. Shoko’s father is now in his 60s, and his second wife looks like she is fixing to leave him for good. Shoko has had no contact with her mother and desperately wants no contact with her father, who has a tendency to drink too much and disappear. Whenever he reappears, Shoko’s brothers expect her to deal with him, but Shoko, like her dad, wants to just disappear herself and be left to do as she pleases. Her blog is unlike any other blog geared toward women. Traditional housewife blogs emphasize happy marriages and children, home decorating and recipes. Shoko’s blog unapologetically emphasizes sleeping in, buying takeout, and spending the day looking for the newest snack items to consume and review. The one thing she has in common with Eriko is that she, too, has never had a best female friend.
The two women meet at a cafe one day. Shoko has been approached by a publisher to write a book, which she is reluctant to do. The blog is easy and requires minimal work from her, but it also doesn’t really pay. Her husband Kensuke has a decent job but they have to budget. Nonetheless he is supportive of Shoko and her decision making. Shoko has just had a meeting with the publisher at the cafe when Eriko comes up and introduces herself. Eriko, who is obsessed with the blog and thinks that Shoko has a perfect life, has figured out how to track her down to the cafe based on blog entries and photos. She convinces herself that this is not stalker-ish. Shoko’s initial impression of Eriko is that this is a smart, successful woman, and it might be good to get to know her better. After sharing drinks and a brief conversation at a restaurant, Shoko suggests they might do so again. This is all Eriko needs. She is convinced that Shoko is now her friend, her best friend. When Eriko’s obsessive nature collides with Shoko’s aloof and independent nature the result is a nightmare for both women. Shoko feels like she is being caged, while Eriko has flashbacks to a traumatic incident 15 years ago involving a childhood friend named Keiko who dumped her. The two women are on a collision course which promises nothing but pain for both of them.
While the story revolves around this particular story of two women who want but cannot seem to cultivate female friendship in their own lives, they are part of a culture that demonizes such friendships anyway. “Women are scary” is a constant refrain amongst the men in the story, especially Eriko’s co-workers. Translator Polly Barton writes about this idea that “women are scary” in a special edition of Hooked from Barnes & Noble. Apparently, in Japanese there are specific words related to female relationships with that we do not have in English, the idea being that these relationships are negative — catty, destructive, “gunky”. Eriko’s co-worker and admirer Sugishita states that women are nasty to each other, always tearing each other down, and so they really cannot have true friendships. When groups of women hang out together, it is scary, unnatural. Many of Sugishita’s “observations” come off more like accusations, and Eriko, as one of the few women at the company, does not feel it does her any good to contradict him.
There are several other female characters in this novel who play small but significant roles for the main characters. When Shoko entertains the idea of writing a book, the publishing agent is a woman who pursues her relentlessly and encourages her to come to gatherings she has arranged with other wife-bloggers. One of these bloggers, Nori, has the most popular blog, and it seems that Nori and the publishing agent could be the kind of people Shoko needs for a sympathetic ear when her situation with Eriko is getting out of hand. Eriko’s former friend Keiko still lives in her building with her own parents, and it seems that Keiko’s life is pretty much a mess but we don’t learn much about her until later in the book. The scenes between Keiko and Eriko at the end are outstanding. Eriko’s mother also gets a powerful scene with her daughter, and one of the female temps at Eriko’s company, a woman named Maori, has her own intense scenes with Eriko. Maori may be a temp, but she is a powerful woman in her own way and not very nice, but Eriko develops a sort of respect for her.
A story about failed friendships and messed up people can be easy to begin and to flesh out, but sticking the landing can be tricky. The last thing we want is a sappy ending, but leaving things just ugly is equally undesirable. Yuzuki’s resolution to Hooked is just about perfect in my opinion. I think anyone who has had a friendship die on them, possibly for reasons you have never understood, will appreciate how she brings this story to its conclusion. This could very well end up in my top 3 of 2026.
