Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsDense, philosophical, and generally quite unhappy
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 11, 2007
Shunsuke Hinoki, a well-respected author nearing the end of his days, has spent his life in search of the beauty he cannot find in himself. Wronged time and again by those he has loved, he's decided to give up on the love of women and substitute instead the pleasure of revenge. When he meets the beautiful, blossoming Yuichi, who confesses that he only loves men, Shunsuke embarks on the most fantastic creative effort of his career - the manipulation of this youth to his own vengeful designs. Convinced to marry a woman he cannot love, instructed in the systematic destruction of the women who have scorned the aging writer, and simultaneously pulled into Tokyo's raging homosexual underworld, Yuichi has no choice but to bear his secrets like a man.
A less feminine, more disturbed artist/muse pair than our beloved Basil Hallward and Dorian Gray, Shunsuke and Yuichi are an extremely difficult duo. Shunsuke is often more compelling than the latter, who seems at times to fulfill his role as a mindless beautiful ideal. The apparent intrusion of an omniscient narrator can be tedious, as well.
But at heart what's most difficult about the novel is its complete moral indifference - much harder to stomach than Wilde's moral decay. The unhappiness (also hard to read) of its characters lacks self-understanding. Though distant enough to leave my daily life undisturbed, I was certainly depressed while reading it.
Well worth reading if you're interested in gender or the twisted depths of our shallow human hearts...
