Hooked

LoveReading Says

Told from the perspectives of two women, both of them devoid of female friends and ill at ease with their place in the world, Hooked sees Asako Yuzuki present a brilliantly gripping story of obsession, loneliness, longing and the extreme subjectivity of perception in a novel that doesn’t let go. Also honest and astute on female friendship, it’s a thrilling, shrewdly comic tale.

On the face of it, Eriko lives a charmed life. Despite the casual misogyny embedded into her office culture, she has a prestigious job working for the seafood section of one of Japan’s most notable trading companies. But beyond her career, Eriko is friendless, lonely to her bones, and find comfort in compulsively reading the blog of housewife Shõko, who represents the antithesis of what a typical Japanese housewife is expected to be.

Her house is messy, she can’t be bothered to do laundry, and she and her husband have a habit of eating eat out at convenience joints. 

For her part, Shõko is no stranger to loneliness, ennui and self-loathing: “What a useless wife I am, she thought to herself yet again”. And, while the success of her blog has given her “a place where she felt she belonged”, she “didn’t want this feeling to be limited entirely to the internet”. What’s more, Shõko is also uneasy in the company of women: “Often, around other women, she’d find herself at a loss for what to say, while with people of the opposite sex, she instinctively knew what to do”. 

When the women meet, after Eriko figures out where Shõko will be, there’s a connection: “Eriko had never thought she would get to have these kinds of conversations with someone”. She even describes the “sensation of having a new friend” as feeling akin to the sensation of falling in love, while Shõko initially envies Eriko’s apparent charmed life, and wonders whether they might become real friends. But Eriko’s behaviour swiftly escalates to obsession, and there’s no telling where it might end.

Richly nuanced and exquisitely paced, Hooked is delectably impactful, and mention must be made of the novel’s translator, Polly Barton, for rendering it so seamlessly into English.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
More reviews by Joanne Owen

About Hooked

The unmissable new novel of friendship and dangerous obsession from Asako Yuzuki, the award-winning author of the global bestselling sensation Butter.

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