Review: Confessions
This is a rush of shock melodrama executed really well. The first chapter could stand as a short story that hits the electric rails of unwed parents, cruel children, child murder, and a horrifying revenge. I was solidly on my heels there and there was still a book to go. Kanae Minato has set herself a lot to follow in her own book and acquits herself well.
Overall it’s an enormously exciting and entertaining story of bad acts and consequences that never holds back. The characters are certainly created in service of the plot, but are fleshed out enough to hold everything together. The plot is a cascade of transgressive actions. The characters didn’t make me feel that this could happen to anyone, but they did make me believe it could happen to someone.
It does get a lot of its juice from upping the ante on transgressive actions. It’s set in a middle school and much of the plot is students doing horrible things to students, teachers doing horrible things to students, students doing horrible things to teachers, and so on. And the things are inventive and horrible. It was just cartoonish enough that I enjoyed it, but not everyone will.
Recommended.