face the strange

“Self,” I told myself, as I circled the bookstore display of Asako Yuzuki’s Hooked, “self, you must de-hype yourself. Yes, this is the new book by the author of your beloved Butter, and yes, Yuzuki has teamed up once again with all time favorite translator Polly Barton, but you must not expect to love it as much as Butter! That is too much weight to place on a book!”

And indeed I did not love Hooked as much as Butter, but it’s still a fascinating book and just as propulsively readable, even as it went off the rails a bit at the end.

Hooked begins with our heroine Eriko arriving at work early. She is a successful employee but otherwise struggling in life. She’s thirty years old, still single, keeps getting dumped by her boyfriends, and doesn’t have a single female friend.

This last fact is the one that torments her. She believes (despite the solid counter-evidence of all those dumpings) that she’s good with men, but she’s terrible at female relationships and she knows it. In fact, sometimes she laments that she’s never had a female friend, although once again - solid counter evidence - she keeps running into her old friend Keiko in the apartment halls. But Eriko destroyed that friendship when she was 15, and hasn’t had a friend since.

However, Eriko has achieved a pleasurable parasocial relationship with her favorite blogger, Hallie B, who bills herself as The World’s Worst Wife. She has neither a job nor children, just stays home all day neither cleaning the house nor cooking, just loafing about and occasionally updating her blog.

Oh, and Hallie B seems to have no female friends either. This makes Eriko feel extremely seen.

Then one day, Eriko catches sight of Hallie B having lunch at a local neighborhood spot. She introduces herself as a big fan of the blog, Hallie B introduces herself by her real name Shoko, and they make plans to have dinner at a nearby Denny’s.

Dinner is a blast! They super hit it off! Eriko rides home on the back of Shoko’s bike, like they’re in a high school anime, amazing. Eriko concludes that her friendship problems are OVER because she has now found a BEST FRIEND FOREVER and they are now going to hang out, like, ALL THE TIME.

Shoko thinks they had a nice evening and hopes they can continue to hang out occasionally.

You can see where this is going. Soon Eriko is sending Shoko lengthy strings of texts promising that she is NOT a stalker, and also stalking the Denny’s where they hung out that one time in case Shoko comes back so Eriko can tell Shoko to her face that she is not! not! NOT! stalking her!

Eriko has some of the same energy as Izzy in The Appeal, except somehow simultaneously more deranged and more self-aware. It seems like these two qualities should be contradictory, and indeed there are times when Yuzuki doesn’t get the balance quite right, and instead of seeming fascinatingly, complexly batshit, Eriko just seems incoherent.

( spoilers )