Molly Foust reviewed Nails and Eyes by Kaori fujino
Review of 'Nails and Eyes' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I like my Japanese horror books full of ghosts. In Nails and Eyes, at first glance anyway, there are no ghosts, except in the metaphorical sense. But upon further thought, maybe the whole plot is ghost-driven.
A toddler in second person addresses her father's mistress with merciless resentment and contempt. After her mother weirdly dies, she is understandably disappointed when her father moves his young mistress in a few short months later. The father is a dick for sure and he shacks up with a woman of almost equal shallowness. Though I could not bring myself to dislike this young mistress. Sure, she lacks ambition and doesn't read books. She is disconnected, friendless, reserved and a little selfish. But she is being narrated into an existence by a toddler so who is she really? And who is the sociopath here? She is a woman who doesn't have good vision, in …
I like my Japanese horror books full of ghosts. In Nails and Eyes, at first glance anyway, there are no ghosts, except in the metaphorical sense. But upon further thought, maybe the whole plot is ghost-driven.
A toddler in second person addresses her father's mistress with merciless resentment and contempt. After her mother weirdly dies, she is understandably disappointed when her father moves his young mistress in a few short months later. The father is a dick for sure and he shacks up with a woman of almost equal shallowness. Though I could not bring myself to dislike this young mistress. Sure, she lacks ambition and doesn't read books. She is disconnected, friendless, reserved and a little selfish. But she is being narrated into an existence by a toddler so who is she really? And who is the sociopath here? She is a woman who doesn't have good vision, in every sense of the word and she is the eyes of the title, but also, the nails in the sense that she is an adult with power. The toddler is the eyes in that we see through the toddler's eyes, and she is the nails part, as she chews her nails down into ragged little knives.
I started this book with a sense of horror already, after I read an article regarding the expectations of a Japanese mother. They must keep a house both clean and aesthetically pleasing. They must do hours of homework and make their kids eight different dishes for the Bento Box. They are expected to do all sorts of dumb crafty stuff, like making costumes or cupcakes. They are exhausted and those who are not overwhelmed by hormones or pressured to do so are choosing to avoid that path more than ever.
Sure there are worse places to be a mother, for example, in a country where one has no access to birth control or the chance to work. But I am pretty sure Japan is way down the list on the women's rights when it comes to developed nations, and this thought guided me as this long-short story unfurled.
So we should dislike this mistress because she is wholly indifferent to endless servitude. Or because she has an affair. And is she to be detested because she is apathetic about homemaking and rearing a child that is not hers? She is not consciously a rebel as she lacks both the wit and the drive to make any statement, but one cannot but feel in her vacant stare a big fuck you, Slacker Style, to the expectations the world has for her. She is coasting along, and does not even want a child, though we learn that her lover and newly minted widower, plans on knocking her up ASAP so he can so he can be assured a maid and babysitter for the long term. (He isn't bothered by all the drama at home, he is busy working, drinking with his buddies and having flings to prove he can still get it up, because he cannot with the mistress, another of her many failings.)
Meanwhile she is plagued with a mean and traumatized toddler that stuffs her face all day, and who hates her while simultaneously being dependent on her.
A sense of boredom wafts from the pages as we read about their quotidienne goings-ons. And beneath that dullness, there are the rancid tones of hate, loss and hopelessness- perhaps the residual spirit of the first wife, who froze to death on a balcony.
On that death. How did she freeze to death in just a few hours of exposure, in Japan? Did her daughter kill her? Maybe, or maybe it was an accident. But this doesn't fit with the emotional eating and anxiety experienced by our toddler-narrator. Her husband? He doesn't seem to care enough and had little motive, and we are told he was away- or was he? . The new mistress? She had never been to the house and just wasn't that driven. Was it a suicide? If so, huh. What a strange and unlikely way to do it. Or is the cause of her death irrelevant, and the point is that she was frozen by her tedious life, a sort of Jeanne Dielman with more money, and that nobody really cared how she died.
I never quite figured it out.
This story is terrifying if you near blind and wearing contacts or dislike plotting and tubby toddlers. For everyone else, it is a quick and creepy narration with the shadow of a ghost.
