I picked up the book Stitches expecting it to be a Junji Ito book but boy was I wrong! The library search misrepresented it since Junji Ito was the illustrator and Hirokatsu Kihara is the real author. I decided to read it anyway since it was a very short book. I thought I would have it done in a night or two but it took me what… three weeks…
Let’s start from the top.
Story summary
Stitches is a collection of nine stories based on true but unsolved events. It’s difficult to summarize nine stories without giving them away so I’ll be light with the descriptions.
The nine stories are:
Face - a mysterious bump that looked like a face and turned into a full possession of the character’s wife.
Library - A ghost possesses a library to the point it needs an excorsis.
From the sea - A goup of teens see strange lights hovering over them.
Festival of the dead - A young character is visisted by the grandpa and grandma of the neighbors next door before the neighbors house catchs on fire.
The play - A puppet and body suit come to life for a play
Folk Dance - A mysterious girl appears at a folk dance where many of the young men want to dance with her and ask for pictures of them with her. They are taken by a young photographer at the folk dance. When the pictures are developped she doesn’t appear in them.
The kimono - The ghost of a young sister haunts her older sister’s daughter on the night before her Shichi-go-San.
Snow day - Walking home a young girl encounter’s a woman walking in the snow barefoot. This woman later haunts her.
Lips - Mysterious lips made of ink appear on the doors of an Armoire.
There is also a bonus manga at the end written and illustrated by Jinji Ito. This one was my favorit since it was about a haunted spa (or a place that is spa like, sorry about my lack of Japanese culture here). I won’t give anything else away.
What I liked…
I liked the formate of this book. I’ve always wanted to write a hybrid of an illustrated novel and a managa where the words flow around the pictures like a children’s book but it’s more for adults. I’m not sure if Stiches is for adults or if it’s more for children though to be honest.
I did like the table of contents. I’ve never seen an illustrated table of contents and it’s something I’ll keep in mind for my own books.
There isn’t much more I can say to be honest about the stories written by Hirokatsu Kihara. They were good but… well lets dive into what I didn’t like about this book.
What I didn’t like…
I didn’t realize the stories were based off of real paranormal stories until I glanced at the description on the back. Usually a book based off of something real has a certain vib about it. This one didn’t and it may have been because it looks and feels more like a manage or a children’s book.
In my respectful opinion as an American writer, the stories needed more color with the words. I realize that this book may read better in it’s original language by the way and may not translate well in English. All of the stories started with something like “This incident took place…” which isn’t the first line hook I was expecting. It doesn’t get me attached to the story as I’m looking for. The rest of the story after is fine to me but it felt short and built to quickly. This is why it took me three weeks to complete lol. I would complete a story and just set it aside because my brain wasn’t hooked on the book anymore.
How to improve
When writing something based on a true story, especially a paranormal story, the true story may not be long in the first place. That is fine of course and I think that was the magic of Stitchs.
I think what I’m looking for from this book is more color with the words. Paint me a picture just like Junji Ito inked us one for each page. Give me a first line hook that grabs my brains attention.
Of course, this is advice coming from an American writer and different cultures have different ways to tell stories. I’d love to hear about this book from the perspective of a Japanese reader. Perhaps it reads differently and is more colorful?
Conclusion
Overall, I think this book had great potential and I did finish it. I loved most of the illustrations at times and the bonus material by Junji Ito was great too! It’s hard for me to put a final conclusion on why this book is still on the lower end of my likes because I’m not sure if this was translated the way it should have. I don’t see a lot of color in the words and a compairison from the Japanese version would be great. I don’t speak Japanese so I won’t be able to provide that unfornenetly.
I’d still recomend it for those who want a quick read (less then a 100 pages) that is different and from a different culture. It’s always nice to hear how something is told differently.
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I hope one day someone will review my writing with this care and nuance. Thank you!