First 5 star read of the year and it was all I had hoped for. I remember watching the 12 episode anime years ago and loved it. When I found out that it had started as a novel before it became a manga I knew I had to read it. I was not disappointed. ( )

Another by Yukito Ayatsuji is well written. The mystery carries the story well through the 600+ pages. The book is part 1 and 2 of Another. Certain parts of dialogue and description seemed like they’d been lost in translation, but overall it’s very well translated. It would be interesting to read it in the original Japanese and see how it differs, or if it does differ. The story is surprising and never predictable. As a horror novel, it was chilling and memorable. ( )

Pros: tense, makes you second guess what’s going on, fascinating characters

Cons: repetition, some gore

Fifteen year old Koichi Sakakibara moves in with his grandparents at the beginning of his third year of middle school. A collapsed lung keeps him from attending the first week of class and he finds things… odd when he does start school. Everyone seems tense and there’s a girl who sits at the back that no one seems to acknowledge is there. He slowly learns of the third-year Class 3 curse, a phenomenon that leaves members of Class 3 and their immediate family dead.

I loved the two main protagonists, Koichi Sakakibara and Mei Misaki (note, following Japanese custom most characters are called by their last names, so I’ll be doing that in my review). It was interesting seeing Sakakibara’s illness, his hesitation when joining the class, trying to figure out what was happening, his consideration of and compassion towards Misaki, his gratitude towards his grandparents. He’s a highly sympathetic character going through difficult times. Misaki is equally interesting, and quite different, being standoffish and mysterious. Seeing their friendship bloom was great.

The book has a very tense atmosphere. You’re just as in the dark about what’s going on as Sakakibara and it makes for an eerie first half of the book, wondering what’s up with Misaki, wondering what the curse is. When things start going wrong it’s quite terrifying. There are a number of twists to the story, making you question and re-question what’s happening.

The translation doesn’t clarify any social or cultural Japanese aspects of the book (aside from explicitly pointing out the meanings of the written characters (kanji) used for various people and place names. This doesn’t affect understanding of the story, though knowing some of this myself did add to my enjoyment of the book.

I did notice there was a fair amount of repetition with regards to conversations and plot points. The afterward to the paperback edition (printed at the back of the English edition) mentions that the book was originally serialized, which probably accounts for that.

There is some gore as several deaths are described. It’s a little graphic at times.

One thing that annoyed me was that the ending turned on a fact that the narrator (ie Sakakibara) knows, but you - the reader - do not. So it’s possible for him to figure out the final twist but much harder for you to do so.

On the whole, if you’re looking for a creepy read, this is a good choice. ( )

Another is a horror mystery novel written by Yukito Ayatsuji which was originally serialized in Japan between 2006 and 2009 before being collected into a single volume later that year. The novel was then released again in 2011 in two separate volumes. It is that edition upon which the English translation by Karen McGillicuddy is based. Another was initially released digitally in English by Yen Press in two volumes in 2103, but in 2014 it was published as a single-volume hardcover under the newly established Yen On light novel imprint. In addition to being Ayatsuji's first novel to be translated into English, Another is probably his most widely-known work, especially outside of Japan. This is in part due to the fact that Another was adapted as a manga series and as an anime series, both of which have been licensed in English, as well as a live-action film. Although I've known about Another for a while, it actually wasn't until I read Ayatsuji's debut novel The Decagon House Murders that I was inspired to pick it up.

Yomiyama North Middle School's third-year Class 3 is cursed. For some strange reason, the students of that class and their immediate families seem to be more susceptible to dying. Some years pass by without any casualties while other years see multiple deaths every month. The curse is said to be tied to an incident which occurred twenty-six years ago. A popular student named Misaki died, but the entire class was in such denial that Misaki's spirit manifested. Now more than two decades later, Misaki's story has been embellished and retold so many times that it's difficult to tell how much of it is rumor and urban legend and how much is really true. Koichi Sakakibara recently transferred into Class 3 and isn't sure what to believe and nobody is being particularly forthcoming about the situation. The curse could just simply be a ghost story, but his classmates and teachers are honestly frightened of something. And soon after Koichi's arrival, a new series of deaths begin.

Another is a marvelous combination of mystery and horror. The first half of the novel explores the "what" and "why" of the increasingly odd situation while the second reveals the "how" and "who." As a transfer student, Koichi is an outsider. He isn't as knowledgeable as the other people involved, and they are reluctant to share information with him, so Koichi is largely left to investigate on his own. Eventually he gains some dubious allies, the most important being a young woman named Mei Misaki who may or may not actually exist. Ayatsuji excels at creating a constant air of uncertainty in Another—he introduces just enough creepiness and doubt that readers, like Koichi, are left questioning everything. While logical analysis is a valid option, the weirdness of the situation and the possibility of supernatural interference makes the more mundane, straightforward answers feel suspect. Additionally, Koichi himself is shown to be a somewhat unreliable narrator, and it's his perspective of the unfolding events that drives Another.

Ayatsuji is particularly well-known for his inventive stories with dramatic twists. Another definitely falls into that category, the plot taking multiple clever and surprising turns over the course of the novel. However, without spoiling things, there was one major reveal towards the end that left me feeling cheated, especially when most of the other developments were so engaging. Retrospectively, the reveal does fit into the overall narrative, and there were some clues hinting at it scattered throughout the novel, but it isn't foreshadowed as well as it could have been. As a result, I found it to be very unsatisfying. The revelation is shocking and certainly leaves an impact, but I think that had the information been shared earlier in the novel it could have been used even more effectively. Despite this one notable complaint, I actually quite enjoyed Another. The mystery was intriguing, the horror was disconcerting, and blended together they formed a chilling novel that was highly readable and kept me eagerly turning the pages.

Experiments in Manga ( )

This book was adapted into an anime, which I've already seen and reviewed. It's been a while since I last saw the anime, but I think it was a fairly faithful adaptation, with the only differences I can recall being a trip to the beach that was entirely invented for the anime and slight differences in the way some students died at the end.

This book is set in 1998 and begins with Koichi in the hospital, recovering after one of his lungs spontaneously collapsed for the second time. He had previously been a student in Tokyo, but, with his father gone to India for his job, he temporarily moved to the small town of Yomiyama to live with his grandparents and Reiko, his aunt. He was supposed to start as a transfer student in third-year Class 3 at North Yomi middle school, but his health issues delayed things.

When he's finally able to start school, Koichi soon notices that his classmates and teachers are behaving strangely, but he isn't able to pinpoint what's going on. Are they all acting oddly because he's new, or is it something else? Koichi finds himself drawn to Mei, a mysterious girl with an eye patch who keeps issuing vague warnings and who no one besides Koichi ever seems to talk to. It isn't until far too late that he learns the details about the curse that has affected North Yomi's third-year Class 3 for 26 years.

Since I had already seen the anime, I already knew everything that was going on: the details of the curse, Mei's part in the whole thing, who would die and how (although, like I said, there were slight changes), and how things turned out in the end. Even so, I was still able to enjoy myself by noting the clues and red herrings that Ayatsuji sprinkled around in the text. Aside from one detail that could be considered cheating (more on this later), the clues were all hidden very smoothly and yet were available for observant readers to find and piece together.

The mystery and suspenseful atmosphere kept me glued to the story, even knowing what would happen, and despite my issues with the writing. The book was written in the first person, from Koichi's perspective, and was sometimes so stilted that it just wasn't believable as a 15-year-old's POV. It also may have colored how I felt about him. Although I recall Koichi being fairly bland in the anime, in the book he struck me as being arrogant, overly reserved, and occasionally somewhat selfish. It wasn't until after several people had already died that he really seemed to realize “Oh, yes, these horrible things that are happening to people around me affect me too.”

Koichi's POV included a lot of hyper-focus on the mundane: his health, the fact that he was only supposed to be in Yomiyama for a year, his family, etc. It was a great strategy, on Ayatsuji's part, for hiding clues, but it also became a little repetitive at times.

I could forgive that to a certain extent, but what I can't quite bring myself to forgive, neither here nor in the anime, was the one important detail that Ayatsuji artificially hid from readers. He tried, via Koichi, to explain the “why” and “how” of it, but I still consider what he did to be cheating, and it annoyed me. Also, by choosing first person POV over third person, he actually emphasized that cheating.

If someone thought they were going to both read the book and watch the anime, I'd tell them they should probably start with the book. If someone planned to only try either the anime or the novel, I'd tell them to go with the anime. While I enjoyed getting to revisit the mystery surrounding North Yomi's third-year Class 3, I was a little disappointed at how stilted the writing (or translation?) was. I'm also still wondering what was up with all those randomly bolded words and phrases.

Extras:

The book ends with the author's afterword to the paperback edition and a 5-page analysis written by Sei Hatsuno.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )