This is the original novel version of Zero Focus! What happened is that the movie came up as ordained in my backlog system from those sets of Criterion Channel Japanese noirs I put in gangs of five, and since previously I had especially enjoyed 張り込み/Stakeout because I read the short story before watching the movie and found the comparison fascinating, and this has the same author (松本清張, Seicho Matsumoto), the same director (野村芳太郎, Yoshitaro Nomura), and the same screenwriter (橋本忍, Shinobu Hashimoto), it only made sense to do the same again and read the original first. I think being able to do that is one of the experiences I really treasure about this language learning business! So anyway I immediately rolled a different ordained and set about reading the novel in the meantime. I haven’t watched the movie yet – I figured I’d make sure to write this out before doing so. I didn’t read it very smoothly (as far as I remember, I was very into the first chapter but didn’t come back to it for a long time and ended up rereading it, and then I went pretty smoothly for most of the novel but had another big gap right before the end) but I enjoyed the novel quite a bit! Its biggest strength by far is the premise and perspective: the protagonist is a woman who has an arranged marriage with an older man who is essentially still a stranger to her, and after very little time to adjust to married life, her husband vanishes mysteriously, leaving her to try to work out what happened to him and why. Her unsettled position and feelings around all of this I think is really well conveyed through her perspective, and I think it’s really easy to relate and be drawn into the mystery because of that, and it amplifies the uncertainty. Is her husband alive or dead? How upset should she even feel either way when she barely knew the guy? How much can she trust her instincts about what he would or wouldn’t do? What is there to do except to search for some kind of truth to hold onto about the situation?

Something I have mixed feelings about, is this really isn’t the kind of novel where there’s multiple threads in play at once; you are just following the one thread of her as she uncovers this mystery through the entire book. On the one hand, that focus (ha) is appreciated and carries a lot of momentum, especially when that perspective is so strong and anchoring. But on the other hand, the book is nearly 400 pages, which feels like a little too much for me for this one thread.

The story deals with a really evocative Ishikawa Prefecture setting.

I think that’s it! Curious to see the movie now – I think it should be a straightforward adaptation? I can think of one plot beat that I suspect might be changed, but – again despite this being like 400 pages – I could see this fitting just fine into a tight noir.