My Two Cents (Book Review): STRANGE HOUSES by Uketsu

A freelance writer living in Tokyo, whose specialty is stories of the macabre, becomes fixated on a seemingly innocuous suburban home that seems to hide sinister secrets. That's the setup for the novel "Strange Houses" by Japanese author Uketsu. From these humble beginnings, things get complicated, and not necessarily in a good way.

The story, told in part from the viewpoint of the aforementioned writer and in part through transcripts of his conversations with other characters, begins when an old friend tells him about a house he's interested in buying. The only thing making him hesitate from signing on the dotted line, however, is a small but curious "dead space" in the kitchen, an area visible only on blueprints of the house. About the size of a coat closet, this space has no means of entry or exit, and there seems no logical explanation for either its function or existence. While the author's friend is ultimately unnerved enough by this anomaly to decide against buying the house, the narrator remains intrigued enough by the mystery to explore further.

He enlists the help of another friend named Kurihara, who is an architect. Like the narrator and the prospective homebuyer, Kurihara is perplexed by the enigmatic dead space shown in the home's floorplan. Kurihara also notices other strange features in the home's design, including the fact that one of the bedrooms on the second floor seems to be deliberately built as if to keep whoever occupied it hidden from notice by anyone else inside -- or outside -- the house.

Kurihara is an imaginative sort, and he quickly comes up with a pretty wild theory about the curious bedroom and dead space downstairs. He also proposes an equally bizarre idea for why the house had been built, and who might have constructed it.

The narrator soon realizes Kurihara may be onto something when the corpse of a man is found dumped near the house, and is found to have had its left hand severed. Their suspicions only deepen when the narrator is approached by a mysterious young woman only a short time later, claiming to be the dead man's wife, and asking for help in finding out the truth about his death.

Like the house at the center of this story, author Uketsu is a strange figure, a popular YouTube personality who shares mystery and horror content from behind the guise of a mask. Uketsu's real identity is unknown, but they have amassed a considerable following by presenting puzzles and riddles to be solved using anecdotal information and diagrams like those found in "Strange Houses."

For a while, at least, the novelty of the concept is engaging. But -- and I'm not sure if it's a matter of the story being translated from Japanese to English -- at some point, it wears thin. Once other strange houses are introduced to the plot, although tied to the first, it feels like the story becomes weighed down and overly complicated. By the time you reach the pay off, it's neither as sinister nor as interesting as the buildup suggested it might be, and even though it's a good concept, in the execution, the story ultimately falls flat.

There's a lot of exposition relayed primarily through dialogue, but because so much of that dialogue is hearsay -- characters describing what other characters heard, said, or did -- you have to wonder why the author bothered with a script-style narrative to begin with. There's not a whole lot of action that actually takes place during the timeframe in which the story is set, which means there's no real tension -- and no real danger or threat perceived for the narrator and his friends.

The fact that Kurihara so easily and accurately deduces the truth about the house's design and purpose is also pretty hard to believe. The house was built, and used for a very grim and specific purpose, and how someone could just offhandedly guess that out of the blue, from nothing more than dead space in a blueprint, seemed way too convenient and implausible. I mean, the story's supposed to be a mystery. It should have been a little harder for the characters to solve.

Again, maybe it's because of the translation into English, but none of the characters seemed particularly interesting to me. Like I mentioned before, there was no real conflict or drama or peril to any of them. There's also no real development, either, and as a reader, I never felt connected to, or invested in any of them.

I wanted to like "Strange Houses" if only because of the unique concept. I know that there are some masterful horror storytellers in Japan -- mangakas Junji Ito or Yuu Kuraishi, and filmmaker Takashi Miike to name a few -- so maybe being familiar with these made me set my hopes too high with this book.

Either way, "Strange Houses" is a strange ride, and while not a completely unsatisfactory one, it's not likely I'll go out of my way to check out more of Uketsu's work anytime soon.

"Strange Houses" is available here.