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A review by 2shainz
Ring by Kōji Suzuki
2.0
Kazuyuki Asakawa is a news reporter who stumbles upon a strange pattern across several seemingly unrelated deaths. His digging leads him to a hotel where he finds the infamous videotape; he and his friend Ryuji race against a death sentence to discover the secret behind the curse.
We all know about The Ring, right? Watch this videotape and die in seven days? Great. The American film was based on the 1998 Japanese movie, Ringu(I really don't know what's up with the music in this trailer), which found its roots in the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki.
The novel reads much more like a procedural than the horror story the films morphed it into; there's a lot of interviewing family members, rifling around in archive rooms, and traveling undercover in the hopes of finding clues. Lurking under the dry and procedural tone of the writing—which may also be due in part to the translation—is pure, unbridled rage, made all the more potent when the story behind the videotape is revealed. The ending was also excellent; I'm probably exposing myself as the morbid, vindictive weirdo that I am, but I love when there aren't easy ways out. Finding the solution and living happily ever after often isn't how life works, and I like it when books acknowledge that.
On the minus side, this book is crazy sexist. Again, some of this could be due to translation or cultural differences, but, in fewer than 300 pages, we get bizarre attitudes about sex and virginity, a main character that's a self-admitted serial rapist (but still gets plenty of page time), and an antagonist that could be read as nothing more than a pissed-off, vengeful woman. We later find out she has ambiguous genitalia, adding another troubling layer to her ruthless characterization. Women and intersex individuals get intensely short shrift here, and that always gets my jimmies rustled.
Read more at Shaina Reads!
We all know about The Ring, right? Watch this videotape and die in seven days? Great. The American film was based on the 1998 Japanese movie, Ringu(I really don't know what's up with the music in this trailer), which found its roots in the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki.
The novel reads much more like a procedural than the horror story the films morphed it into; there's a lot of interviewing family members, rifling around in archive rooms, and traveling undercover in the hopes of finding clues. Lurking under the dry and procedural tone of the writing—which may also be due in part to the translation—is pure, unbridled rage, made all the more potent when the story behind the videotape is revealed. The ending was also excellent; I'm probably exposing myself as the morbid, vindictive weirdo that I am, but I love when there aren't easy ways out. Finding the solution and living happily ever after often isn't how life works, and I like it when books acknowledge that.
On the minus side, this book is crazy sexist. Again, some of this could be due to translation or cultural differences, but, in fewer than 300 pages, we get bizarre attitudes about sex and virginity, a main character that's a self-admitted serial rapist (but still gets plenty of page time), and an antagonist that could be read as nothing more than a pissed-off, vengeful woman. We later find out she has ambiguous genitalia, adding another troubling layer to her ruthless characterization. Women and intersex individuals get intensely short shrift here, and that always gets my jimmies rustled.
Read more at Shaina Reads!