JU-ON

On the spur of the moment, I picked up the film-to-book novel. A rare genre for me this is, as I had spotted it much earlier at the library with lukewarm keenness, even before the review appeared.

What surprised me and levitated the novel to another level, was the characterization the author, Kei Ohishi, put into the long raven-haired, white-clad and pale-looking young mother, Kayako. That is, before she becomes it: a blood-thirsty salamander. Her world is described as small, magnifying the pain and atrocities she suffers, to create the huge amount of hatred resulting in ju-on*.

From her school days when she has a crush on a classmate to her parents' death, Kei Ohishi drew the reader into the greyness, loneliness of a perhaps awkward, emotionally vulnerable young woman. She marries a man, with whom they have a son, Toshio. Kayako, being the placid one, has insisted on the name, Toshio, its second character being similar to that of her crush. When Toshio turns six, the husband tortures and cuts her up with a box cutter in rage of jealousy, upon knowing about his low sperm count and the scrapbook documenting Kayako's puppy love. He has thought that the child isn't his. After which, the husband is murdered in bizarre fashion with Toshio nowhere to be found. Thus, the blood fest begins. One family after another, move into the haunted house, only to suffer unexplained deaths. Don't miss the lovely, moving epilogue which sheds more light on Kayako. Though in my opinion, sympathy is hardly deserved.

*Ju-on (noun): The curse of a person who dies while holding a very strong hatred or rage. This curse accumulates in the place where that person lived, and becomes a "karma." Anyone who comes into contact with this curse dies, and the curse is recreated anew.