Novels No. 82

 

Uketsu. Strange Pictures. 2022. USA: Harpervia/HarperCollins, 2025.

Somewhat reminiscent of the Murdle series, Japanese writer/artist Uketsu presents us with mysteries involving images. In four different stories we learn about the various ways our brains create or interpret art. Each story has a built-in prompter, or guide, who leads us through the puzzles—a chance for us to solve it as we go. Part logical detection, part psychoanalysis. Apparently drawing assignments are sometimes used as therapeutic tools in treating disturbed patients.

A► A man calls himself Raku for the purpose of writing a blog; happily he shares wife Yuki’s pregnancy progress. Yuki gives birth to a baby but sadly dies during the process. She left Raku some confusing drawings of the future she forecast. Why does he never mention the child again?

B► Naomi and Yuta Konno live on poverty’s edge while she works for minimum wage and he attends nursery school. The kids are assigned to draw a picture of their mothers, but little Yuta does not draw a woman. His teacher Ms Haruoka is determined to learn what was really on Yuta’s mind.

C► High school art teacher Miura is found brutally murdered on a mountainside where he’d gone camping. He left behind a sketch of the landscape. No one was ever arrested. Perhaps art student Kameido was the only person who liked the man. Three years later, former journalist Kumai coaches wannabe reporter Iwata on the facts of the cold case. Who killed Miura?

D► Naomi’s drawing as a youngster was analyzed as being a person who could overcome an aggressive spirit and nurture her innate kindness. Yet her feelings of protecting the vulnerable grow so uncontrolled that her husband and her son both die. Was the original diagnosis faulty?

Hint: “Children don’t draw the thing that they see with their eyes, they draw the idea in their minds.” 

Hint: a killer is involved more than once.

While each story has more than one twist, the bigger concept is the way they all begin to come together as we recognize interconnections. Sequence is an important factor in reconstructing events. In the images, can you detect the subtleties beyond the obvious? Don’t worry, the guides are there to boost us along with their own amateur guessing. Do some psychological conclusions seem farfetched? Can your mind play tricks on you? It’s quirky, it’s challenging, it’s fun—give it a go!

Scraps

▪ So, anyway, this is going to be like a diary, just me writing whatever I happen to feel like. (17)

▪ I cannot forgive you. But even so, I will always love you. (28)

▪ From where he sat, Yuta eyed Naomi cautiously, trying to read her expression. Was Mama feeling better, or still angry? (59)

▪ The door was unlocked. The chain was released. She looked down ... Yuta’s shoes were gone. (75)

▪ “Hardly any of the students at school actually liked Mr. Miura. He was so quick to anger.” (111)

▪ Why would Miura, faced with a knife-wielding criminal, draw a picture rather than run away? (139)

▪ As if by pure reflex, she leapt at her mother. It was the first time she had ever fought back. (187)

▪ “That child had a powerful urge to protect, and I suppose it made her want to defend those weaker than herself.” (204)

Helen Fitzgerald. Viral. UK: Faber & Faber Ltd, 2016.

What have I done? This was supposed to be a thriller about finding a young woman who fled the aftermath of an embarrassing video gone viral. Well – it is. The author, whose style and humour I admire, is one I wanted to catch up with. Still, I wasn’t quite prepared for the frank nature of said video, the filming of it described in technicolour, so to speak. Push past it, I scolded myself! The young woman is Su-Jin, adopted as a baby by Scottish sheriff Ruth Oliphant and musician husband Bernard Brotheridge. Till now, Su has been a model daughter, withstanding merciless bullying from sister Leah—who is considered the “wild” one. Nonetheless, it’s Su in the humiliating video, filmed at a drunken rave while the sisters vacationed in Malatuf, Majorca, to celebrate high school graduation. It’s available to the whole internet world now, including her hapless parents, so Su goes into hiding and Leah returns home alone.

Ruth’s control freak takes over. Because there’s no legal avenue to pursue, she’s personally going after the guy who filmed and posted the video. She sets Bernie to scouring social media for clues to the filmer’s identity; she hires Michael MacDonald, a lawyer with widespread contacts. Sending Leah back to Malatuf to find Su is restorative justice, Ruth figures. Meanwhile Su is slinking around Barcelona, ashamed, hoping not to be recognized as the latest YouTube sensation, examining her options as she hears medical school cancelled her acceptance. The public frenzy doesn’t stop even when actual, heart-breaking tragedy strikes the family. Then Su flies to Korea; she may be able to find her birth mother about whom she manically fantasizes. Ruth flies to Malatuf to find her target; a serious, squeamish reckoning is about to happen.

Fitzgerald has a way of engaging us by the characters’ candid personalities and outrageous remarks. She’s nailed out-of-control teenagers, adoption issues, anger management and other family drama, not without humour at each absurdity of human nature. Some might say that Viral is akin to an extended bipolar episode.

Su

▪ “Folk are sharing like wildfire.” (22)

▪ Thinking about physics and reading about politics not only makes you tired, but also very worried. A sober, well-informed mind is a tense and rightly paranoid one. Basically all I’m saying is that I’d taken to the drink. (49)

▪ I have lost my mother her job and her dream of being the mother of a Nobel Prize-winner. (100)

▪ As much as I’d love to ruin, maim or kill Xano, I can’t. Mum wouldn’t approve. She’s a believer in the law. Hell, she is the law. (118)

▪ Perhaps Magaluf was only the beginning, and my life hereon would be a snowball of shame. (159)

▪ I’m incredulous. “I don’t believe this is what you’re really like.” (224)

Ruth

▪ In this city, there were more social workers on the street than cigarette butts. (32)

▪ Bernard wasn’t threatened by her competence. He had his own roles—to provide emotional support, and food. For anything else, Ruth felt he needed her clear instructions. (21)

▪ “Leah, you let this happen. You allowed your sister to get drunk when she’s not used to drinking. You, Millie and Natasha took drugs so you were unable to look after each other or Su.” (56)

▪ A man called Xano had ruined her daughter’s life, and was now ruining hers. (76)

▪ If Su found nothing, it might depress her, or obsess her and sap her energy. And if she found something – her mother – she risked rejection a second time. (149-50)

▪ “Take your grief and your anger and your fear and roll it into one humungous sun-sized ball of energy and use it, Su.” (161)