Reading it now. Not one character is normal. The social differences are also disturbing in a different way. Lots of twists and turns. Thanks for your review.

Amazing book. This was a solid review/plot summary-it reminded me of a ton of details about the book that I'd forgotten, since I'd read it about 7 years ago. Kind of want to re-read it! "Grotesque" (2003) was also very good.

This was an amazing summary!

The ending was weird for sure and I didn't exactly like it, but I think I get what the author was going for. Satake was seeking the feeling he had when he murdered the first woman, which was a sick kind of love that he felt he could never feel except in the moment of death. So the twist is that Masoko ends up having that same feeling for Satake as he's dying. What I'm not sure about is the implication for the future. She says she's going to have a freedom different from Satake's idea of freedom, but I kind of felt like the implication was that his death was going to leave a mark on Masoko the same way the first woman's death left a mark on Satake, which left him empty inside and shut out from the rest of the world.