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the complete review - fiction

Strange Pictures

by
Uketsu

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : a different kind of pop procedural, with some clever/appealing use of illustrations

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "It is not just the story and structure themselves which satisfy, but the fact that, for all the novel’s narrative threads, the author ties up all of the loose ends before the novel concludes. (...) Between the novel’s disquieting pages, Strange Pictures also contains a notable degree of sensitive cultural commentary. (...) All of these details come together to make what could be simply a well-executed mystery-horror volume into something more thoughtful and complex." - Alison Fincher, Asian Review of Books
  
  
• "The style is staccato: short paragraphs, few sub-clauses, and facts relayed like bullet points. Yet there’s an eeriness to sentences like these: “A chill ran through her. She felt the wheels of her dark fate turning.” Strange Pictures is advertised as horror, but it’s more creepy than terrifying (.....) The text is broken up by endless pictures and diagrams explaining details of the case -- perhaps for the benefit of Uketsu’s core fans, who have largely migrated from YouTube. It feels sometimes like looking at a detective’s evidence board." - Emily Lawford, The Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Strange Pictures has pictures -- quite a lot of them -- but many of the illustrations in the novel are not, as one finds in many illustrated books, so much scenes-from-the-story in visual form as integral parts of it -- evidence and clues to the mysteries being explored here. Numerous drawings made by various characters are presented, and closely examined and analyzed by others -- in some cases with details from the drawings enlarged and considered separately before again being put together to show or suggest the big picture, but also, for example, considered superimposed on one another; in one case, the consequences of the way the piece of paper on which a drawing was made was folded up is of significance.
       The novel spans decades. It is presented in five parts -- with one, a brief introductory episode, set apart from the novel, printed even before the table of contents. This short first account prominently features a drawing which a professor shows to the class she is teaching, as an example of how a drawing reveals the inner workings -- and potential -- of a mind and psyche. The drawing was made by an eleven-year-old girl who murdered her mother. Analyzing the simple drawing, the professor finds clues as to what might have driven the girl to such an act -- and also concludes: "After looking at this picture, I concluded that Little A had a strong chance at rehabilitation". She recommended a course of treatment, and reports that: "I understand that Little A is now living happily as a mother".
       The novel proper then begins with a chapter that has a student named Sasaki become fascinated by a blog that had been kept up for a while by someone calling themselves Raku. Raku describes being married to a somewhat older woman, Yuki, and chronicles the period when Yuki gets pregnant; he includes several drawings Yuki makes during this time -- clues Sasaki tries to piece together to understand the fate of Raku, his blog, and his family.
       The next chapter moves on to a seemingly unrelated story, where a five-year-old boy, Yuta is being raised by single mother Naomi, whose husband Haruto had died a few years earlier. Here, too, a drawing figures prominently -- one Yuta drew at nursery school, his teacher somewhat concerned about what it depicts (while his mother is surprised to see that he is able to write his own name, in kanji, on the drawing). With Naomi sensing that they are being followed, there's a sense of menace in the air here, too .....
       Only late in the second chapter do we learn of connections to some of what appeared in the first -- and the third chapter then describes yet another episode whose connection to the previous ones only eventually becomes clear. Here again it is a matter of murder, as a young wannabe-reporter dredges up an old murder with which no one was ever charged, that of art teacher Yoshiharu Miura. There were several potential suspects -- not least because, rather amusingly, Miura was actively disliked by practically everyone, his style -- even as he seemed and tried to be ever-helpful -- being seriously grating. Revisiting the crime many years later, the young would-be reporter gets more than he presumably bargained for.
       A final chapter then connects all the dots and pictures of the larger story, the various mysteries and murders solved and fit into place. It's a bit intricate -- with Uketsu carefully dosing what he reveals and when -- with, as is the case with many of the illustrations, things not being exactly what they initially seemed, or there being additional layers to them.
       Part of the fun of the novel is in the detective-work that Uketsu has his various characters do, spelled out step by step for readers to follow. Much of this involves analysis of the various drawings, as the characters slowly and deliberately examine and hypothesize about these clues. Throughout, there is considerable repetition -- of facts, text, and the drawings themselves, including the drawings being shown both piecemeal and pieced together, with various close-ups as well. Beyond the drawings, there are also other illustrations, presumably meant to be helpful -- flowcharts, timesheets, lists, calendars. At times, some of this feels too basic -- one can almost feel the manga-version begin to poke through -- but all in all it makes for reasonable read-along fun, the clues laid out (and, in repetition, often hammered home), very prominently for the reader to try to puzzle things out themselves.
       The struggles of the various characters -- the single mom, the wannabe reporter (and the old one, taken off the beat after a cancer diagnosis) -- adds a bit to the novel as well, and the incredible dislikability of one of the victims, Miura is a nice comic touch to an otherwise dark story. (Miura ran the art club at school, but barely anyone could stand to remain a member: "Like, they had ten new people sign up, but they all left in the first month".)
       Uketsu's stories -- the smaller ones, as well as the overarching one -- are fairly creatively imagined, and quite well presented, but for all its intricacies Strange Pictures is also fairly basic -- more YA fiction (or manga) than adult mystery (though certainly with adult-level gore and violence: "The face was so disfigured, they couldn't even tell if it was a man or woman, much less match it to his ID. It sounds gruesome, but the remains were barely identifiable as human"). It's a clever enough piece of pop fiction, and different enough from the usual mystery-read, but not much more.

- M.A.Orthofer, 11 January 2025

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Links:

• HarperVia publicity page
• Pushkin Press publicity page
• Futabasha publicity page
• Emily Books Agency information page
• Seuil publicity page
• Lübbe publicity page
• Reservoir Books publicity page

• Asian Review of Books
• Books By Your Bedside
• The Critic (scroll down for review)
• Let's Talk Books
• Publishers Weekly
• The Times

• uketsu on YouTube
• The Masked Writer: Uketsu by Elisa Taillefesse-Barbosa

• See Index of Japanese literature
• See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
• Other books from Pushkin Press under review

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About the Author:

       Uketsu (雨穴) is a popular Japanese YouTube personality and bestselling author.

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© 2025 the complete review

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