Zoo

I finished Zoo by Otsuichi yesterday.

I heard about the book in the last few pages of Battle Royale about three weeks ago. It included the description that was also on the back of the copy of Zoo that I ended up reading: “A man receives a photo of his girlfriend every day in the mail… so that he can keep track of her body’s decomposition. A deathtrap that takes a week to kill its victims. Haunted parks and airplanes held in the sky by the power of belief. These are just a few of the stories by Otsuichi, Japan’s master of dark fantasy.”

I like horror and thought this might be fun. I was intrigued. I tracked it down from a local library. I wanted something dark and gritty. As a whole, they were dark and twisted. However, I don’t feel like I ever got gritty.

On their own, I liked each story. I thought they might somehow come together as one piece but they never did. I was kind of hoping that would happen.

Most of the stories are divided into their own little numerical chapters. By the time I got to the end of that first section of each story, I wanted to read more. Otsuichi delivers some solid hooks and twists.

I’m not going to give a synopsis of each story — you can find that in a lot of reviews. The collection is made up of 11 short stories of varying lengths. My favorites included, in no particular order, “Find the Blood!”, “Wardrobe”, and “Seven Rooms”. I also really liked “Zoo” and “Kazari and Yoko”. I liked the stories where we got to know the characters a bit more and got to learn about the dynamics of their relationships, especially in ways that felt honest. I had a hard time with the stories that didn’t feel grounded, believable.

I thought the stories were based on some really cool ideas. I could see a few of these stories being fleshed out. When I think back on most of the stories, especially when I read a synopsis, I think “Oh, yeah! That was cool!” However, I don’t find most of the stories themselves completely memorable. Two exceptions: “Wardrobe” and “Seven Rooms”.

I went into this thinking these would be more horror stories than they turned out to be. They were each horrific in their own ways but together, they aren’t what I think of when I think of horror as a genre.

I liked it. If you like short stories, you might like this.

I was left a little underwhelmed. I think this is because I really wanted the stories and characters to come together somehow. I also wanted some grittiness. That’s more to do with my expectations than anything in the book, honestly.