Abstract

17-year old Sayaka Tadokoro lies in a coma, supposedly after falling from her fourth-floor apartment. It’s unclear whether it was an accident or suicide, at least according to the news. The papers quote the girl’s mother, who didn’t understand why such a thing had taken place, when she had raised her daughter “giving her all the love I possibly could.”
What really happened? Alternating between notes written by the girl’s mother, the girl’s own reminisces, and the account of a teacher whose suspicion is roused by the mother’s phrase “all the love I possibly could”, the book slowly progresses closer to the grisly truth. The dynamics of this troubled family transpire to hinge upon one fatal moment when, after a landslide and subsequent fire, the mother is forced to choose between the life of her infant daughter and that of her own mother, whom she idolizes.
An intricately woven thriller revolving around the cloying, sinister and destructive dynamics between two sets of mother and daughters, and the complex business of separating the real truth from the lies that people feed themselves.

Author’s Information

Kanae MINATO (born 1973) is a Japanese writer of crime fiction and thriller.
She started writing in her thirties. Her first novel Confessions (Kokuhaku) became a bestseller and won the Japanese Booksellers Award. The movie Confession directed by Tetsuya Nakashima was nominated to 2011 Academy Award.