hat a delicious paper cut! The place is Tokyo, the subject ostensibly tattoos, but in fact we’re in macabre, ironic territory here, Japanese neo-realism with a nihilistic bite. The fun of it all is that high school dropout Kanehara — 21 when she wrote this — is deeply moral at heart. Her 19-year-old protagonist, Lui, is a cold-blooded observer of Tokyo’s body piercing scene, and pierced herself, but that doesn’t keep her from milking a higher purpose from dead boyfriends and 14g studs.
W
About the Author: Book Staff
The Book Staff represents a series of authors who review books for the magazine on a regular basis.