Kerri Sakamoto's The Electrical Field was another random bookstore find. I was intrigued first by the Japanese name -- I'm on a Japanese lit rampage lately, though Sakamoto is Japanese-Canadian, not Japanese -- and second by the mention of an "unreliable narrator" in the back-cover blurb. I usually enjoy a story where the "truth" is filtered through a biased narrator, and the reader has to sort out multiple viewpoints or contradictory versions.

The electrical field is a grim little book. The subject matter is grim, involving a murder and disappearance and set among memories of WWII internment camps (yes, the Canadians interned their Japanese citizens too; in fact they were far crueler than the US, but more on that later). But the real grimness comes from the narrator Asako, a mostly unlikeable woman with a mostly unpleasant and unrewarding life of routine and annoyance. After her neighbor, her only real friend, turns up murdered, with the husband and children missing, Asako reconstructs the circumstances leading up the murder (and the circumstances of her earlier life leading to her current state) through flashbacks. More and more is revealed obliquely over time, as Asako herself begins to fall apart. The way important episodes are gone over multiple times, with more becoming clear each time, reminded me of the flashbacks in Catch-22, as Yossarian only gradually reveals what really happened in the bomber.

the story develops slowly, without much happening on the surface. over time, Asako begins to reveal herself, and a desire to understand her kept me reading. the murder provides the catalyst that leads to a kind of breakdown and ultimately to a change. I don't think I'd say it would appeal to most tastes -- and I certainly wouldn't call it a "psychological thriller" as the cover blurb does -- but I thought it was good.