Deeply layered, dark tale about womanhood I won't be able to write a review that does the book justice as this really was not at all what I expected: This was more than just plain crime, it touched all nuances of humanity from anxiety, love, hate to desire. The book follows 3 women: Yuriko, Kazue and Yuriko's older sister and they somehow all get swallowed by the highschool world and later the corporate world. Yuriko's older sister recounts the events leading up to the murder of both Kazue and Yuriko who ended up as prostitutes. Yuriko's older sister has been jealous of her sister - partly because Yuriko was described as breathtakingly-beautiful since her birth. After retelling how they all went to an elite high school, she compiles both of the girls diaries and the written confession of their murder Zhang. (Though I always had the notion - spoiler - that the murderer in fact was Yuriko's sister, but that's another thing were the novel gets ambiguos.) But be warned, there is a lot of incest and violence going on. I just finished today and there is still so much to interprete as Kirino keeps the reader guessing by keeping some things vague. That's probably what I enjoyed most because every little sentence was surrounded with a little mystery. The characters in this book were in fact grotesque and everyone's lifestory in here was sad, dark and too much to take. I just felt sorry for everyone. Except Yuriko's sister who we never get to know by name: Textbook unreliable narrator who deserves only the worst. It also began and ended with two of the best sentences I have every read - strongly composed!