Most delightfully evil book you wish you could read, but not now

First published in Japan in 2008 to instant acclaim and best seller status (three million copies and counting), and then adapted into a film that was selected as Japan’s entry for Best Foreign Language film in the 2010 Oscars, Confessions is not for the faint of heart. It is gripping, it is scary, it is a book you wish you could read any other time but now.

It opens with a classroom scenario: middle-school science teacher Yuko Moriguchi announces her retirement to her suddenly attentive class of young teenagers. There is a valid reason, she feels, to announce her departure not just from this particular school but from teaching altogether. As the first 20 or so pages pass by in eerily detached and precise prose, we learn that Moriguchi has much need to reflect on her life and her future. Until recently, she was a single mother to a four-year-old daughter, Manami, the result of a now splintered relationship with the child’s HIV-positive father.