varingblaarStrange Houses by Uketsu
Spoiler warning: If you haven't read Strange Houses, I suggest you do so before going any further. If this spoils it for you, it's not my fault.You have been warned.
The premise sounds super interesting. The floor plans of the house make up the mystery. Super spooky and a pretty cool concept.
Dealing with the floor plans directly is quite interesting. The narrator and their architect friend Kurihaha find these weird building bits on the plans. It reminds me of Sherlock and Watson. Dr Watson opens the paper going "hey Sherlock look at this", followed by Sherlock Holmes saying "good job Watson but you missed something".
It's fun when they mention a detail and you can page back and spot it on the provided map. This book definitely works best in physical form. Where it all falls apart for me, is the wild leaps of logic they employ to make the building plans make sense, and then a chapter later it's simply assumed that they were correct in their crazy accusations. No evidence is really found but they seem to be correct. I look at a weird little outcrop on a building plan and don't think "hiding a murderer" I would think "probably a plumbing issue".
The atmosphere of the story is great. The environments are well described and feel real. I can picture the characters getting on the train, going to a coffee shop, finding a table...
A little past halfway we sit down with Yuzuki again, now that we know who she is and her connection to the houses. From that point it feels like we're in a different book where she's just telling the story of this family with an incestuous left hand cult. The design of their house plays a role, so I guess it ties back to why the titular "strange houses" were so strange several generations later, but it could've just been a Japanese horror short story on its own. I saw short story because the entire book is less than 200 pages.
Not all the details are resolved though. Especially Kurihaha still has some questions that are never answered. There's a little bit of "we may never know" doubt cast towards the end of the story, but I didn't lose much sleep over it.
It's a very quick read and sort of fun with the floor plans. The writing is well executed, atmospheric and very well translated. But the story itself is sort of mid. The problem is, it worked. I'm going to read the other books by this enigmatic Japanese author. Even if the story isn't that great, it's a cool conversation starter.
