El deseo de formar parte de algo, de encontrar un lugar en el mundo, de sentirse amada y necesitada, llevará a una hermosa joven a perpetrar atroces crímenes sin importarle las consecuencias que estos acarrean ni los inocentes que caen víctimas del fuego cruzado.

A different sort of 1001 book - this novel focuses on Junko, a young woman with the power to start fires with her mind, and the arson detective investigating a series of what look like vengeance killings involving fire. The novel contrasts the isolation of Junko with a different kind of isolation for the detective, a middle-aged woman on the arson squad who was seemingly put in the role to meet a diversity goal. I raced through the book as it followed both Junko and the detective. I did find a few things to be a bit odd, including Junko's developing relationship with a young man she meets later in the novel, but overall I liked the book. ( )

La quatrième de couverture ne me disait vraiment rien, mais ce que j'ai déjà lu de Miyuki Miyabe m'ayant intéressé, j'ai lu ce livre. Le cocktail est assez étrange entre une enquête policière très classique, une société secrète et des pouvoirs surnaturels. J'ai ressenti un léger surdosage des superpouvoirs (c'est difficile de lesw contrôler, n'est-ce pas ?), mais sans que cela ne nuise à l'ambiance générale. Bref, pas mal mais j'ai préfèré le réalisme d'[b:Une carte pour l'enfer|553663|Une carte pour l'enfer|Miyuki Miyabe|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175741795s/553663.jpg|1080207]. ( )

Bought second hand as part of my personal challenge to read more 1001 books written by women and it didn't disappoint!
Not my useful fare, this is part thriller, part sci-fi, part moral questioning. I loved the fact that the detective and the vigilante were both women, 3-dimensional and strong.
A woman with a strange gift comes across a group of young men stashing a body, after she intervenes, she realises they are part of a gang that have been preying on young girls. Killing the women, dumping the bodies and getting away with it. But if the law doesn't have the resources or the teeth to deal with such criminals, can those with the right powers? Do any of us have the right to go above the law? Even if it is to correct an injustice?
I found this gripping and thought-provoking. It does, as another reviewer wrote, bare resemblance to Stephen King's work, but the rich Tokyo backdrop and the well-drawn female roles set it in its own category. Highly recommended. ( )

Crossfire is a Japanese novel that I read because it is on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. I was a bit skeptical about why it would be on the list, since it looked like just a run-of-the-mill mystery novel. Usually the mysteries that make it onto the list, though, are there because they provide a certain kind of insight into a culture or a time period, so I had that in mind while I read.

Junko is our main character, and we find out early on that she has a supernatural power: pyrokinesis. Once that fact is established, the novel concerns itself with the role or responsibilities of a person with powers like that, Junko's self-image as a result of her power, and the experience of being "other" in society. It also covers the major bases of a suspense novel. The Tokyo of this book isn't really the one I tend to visualize, full of modern skyscrapers, clean but crowded streets, bright neon signs. The parts of Tokyo Miyabe presents us with are remote, sparsely inhabited at night, decidedly middle-to-lower class.

I think that this view of Tokyo is part of the reason the book is on the list. Other than providing a look at the underside of Japan's public face, I'm not sure what new ground is really covered here. The writing is serviceable, but not striking (though I'm reading in translation, of course). The emotional part of the story doesn't have many twists and turns, and the mysteries that are not revealed to the reader right away comprise a pretty small piece of the overall puzzle. It was a decent read, but not a page-turner.

Recommended for: believers in vigilante justice, people interested in seeing another view of Japanese society

Quote: They were all raised to think of themselves as special, as better than others, and they needed to find something to prove it to themselves, to justify their sense of entitlement. But what if they never found that "something"? All they were left with was their enormous conceit. They were like flower bulbs raised in water, floating in a transparent, colorless pool of nihilism. Surrounding the bulb was nothing - nothing that could give them a true sense of themselves. ( )