Today I had a most poetic literary day that may be commonplace for others but not for me. Due to a sudden change in my day’s plans I found myself in a local bookstore I had never visited before— new books, not used, so my hopes were down because I tend toward older and cheaper books. Wandering around aimlessly for a little while, I finally ended up doing exactly what you’re supposed to do in a bookstore— randomly stumble upon something you can’t resist checking out. That was Strange Pictures (and Strange Houses), a mystery by the mysterious Japanese author Uketsu.
I flipped through both of them extremely tentatively and saw that drawings and floorplans and discussions thereof are woven into the narrative. The book is not so much illustrated as it is presenting exhibits. I picked up slight horror vibes from both (maybe I was thinking of Slender Man or other creepypasta for Strange Pictures and House of Leaves for Strange Houses) and the Japanese and hypertextual vibes seemed extremely cozy to me so I immediately resolved to read them— a remarkable thing because as a rule of thumb I avoid newer books and Strange Pictures is from 2022.
The only reason I didn’t read both books back to back is because I wanted to work on my own book (I’m having fun with a new project) but I blew through Strange Pictures and really enjoyed it. I won’t spoil anything about it other than that it’s about mysterious deaths and the general theme is that there is a lot more to pictures, whether they’re psychologically analyzed or treated like a puzzle, than meets the eye. (The prologue features the somewhat bullshit but still kind of cool House-Tree-Person test!) It lagged for me a little about halfway through when what unfolded did not seem immediately connected to what came before but I knew it would obviously eventually tie back so I had a great time.
One interesting observation I can make out of it is that for reasons unknown to me but maybe explainable by yadda-yadda about the subtleties of the Japanese language is that the translation’s writing style comes across as extremely childlike. Like, it reads like a middle schooler wrote it. I didn’t really mind though because escaping to something that feels very different is part of why I read Japanese fiction.
Hilariously I just googled this book to learn more about it and the first result was a Reddit thread saying that it was the worst book the OP had ever read—
Holy fucking shit! I know the guy! This is as big a twist as the ones in the book I just read! No joke. He’s such an asshole too. Maybe the book made him feel dumb.