Title: Confessions
Author: Kanae Minato
Translated by: Stephen Snyder
Published on: August 19th 2014
Published by: Mulholland Books
Purchase link: Amazon
Synopsis:
Her pupils killed her daughter. Now, she will have her revenge.
After an engagement that ended in tragedy, all Yuko Moriguchi had to live for was her four-year-old child, Manami. Now, after a heartbreaking accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation.
But first, she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that will upend everything her students ever thought they knew about two of their peers, and sets in motion a maniacal plot for revenge.
Narrated in alternating voices, with twists you'll never see coming, Confessions probes the limits of punishment, despair, and tragic love, culminating in a harrowing confrontation between teacher and student that will place the occupants of an entire school in harm's way. You'll never look at a classroom the same way again.
Review:
Just a heads up that this is going to be spoilery. It’s up to you whether you continue reading or not. I was also spoiled prior to reading this but that never prevented me from being surprised by this book. Spoiler starts after the read more button!
As someone who’s pretty much always updated with anything that has something to do with Japan, I really cannot explain how this book escaped my radar. Confessions by Kanae Minato was originally written in Japanese, published on 2008 in Japan and it even had a movie adaptation (which I’m also not aware of until now.) The book was then adapted into English and was released in 2014.
Confessions is told in an alternating point of views. The first POV was of Ms. Moriguchi, the class adviser, whose 4-year-old girl died from the school grounds because of drowning presumably because of an accident. Her POV focuses on telling the class the real story of how her child died; that it wasn’t an accident but a murder, and that the murderer was a student in her class. The following POVs are then focused on the events that come after the day of Ms. Moriguchi’s confession which was also her last day in teaching at the school.
