Daphne Bennett

As I was quite paranoid whether I had said anything out of line I went back to my older posts. I found that I actually quite enjoy reading my own gibberish. So now I think even just for the sake of reading my own journey later it’s a good thing keeping this online space I guess.

I often have spikes of absolute certainty and other times I am in so much doubts I feel like drowning. I still think writing it down purposefully on a blog that I can edit means more to me than just scribbling in a notebook, which I don’t normally go back to read them.

Apart from my serendipitous career and my never-ending studies, I want to write about things I read. Easy ones, difficult ones, sensational ones.

Let’s start with an easy one.

I saw Asako Yuzuki’s Hooked in Sainsburys and was attracted by the colour and how seamlessly it owned its space on a supermarket bookshelf. Easy, convenient, cheap, with bright colours and a dead fish on the cover.

It did not disappoint. Some critics says the story is too unrealistic but no it is so real. Probably because I have the potential to be a stalker? I loved it. It prompts me to reflect my relationship with internet and people, which is not far from an druggie and alcoholic’s relationship with drugs and alcohol. And loneliness. Is this a modern phenomenon that we are so lonely? Or there’s no we, it’s just me?

Hooked is a story about blogging and two women who have a bit too much time in their hands. On the outside, Eriko is a successful business woman in the Japanese seafood industry. She discovered a housewife blog and was absolutely ‘hooked’ by the blogger Shoko’s life. Shoko lives off food from convenience stores in a messy home, not working and not looking for a job, and appears wildly authentic to Eriko. Eriko tracked her down to befriend with her. They started talking and Eriko wanted more and more and the crave spiraled out of control.

There are some good proses. I enjoy the alternating storyline of the two women and their internal monologues, the justification of the predator and the speculation of the prey. They remind me of myself, my mum, my expectation and reservation with people. Eriko wanted to be Shoko, was jealous of Shoko, wanted to own Shoko. But what she really wanted is a facade or one of the facet of Shoko that reflects her emptiness. Is this narcissism? Or is it just a lack of reference point when one is so isolated?

Last couple of years I have seen a lot of people, both high and low. Strangely I am always more drawn to less ambitious (what an awful thing to say you judgmental prick. I know, I know). I walk on the street, I want to be the carer walking home, I want to be the mum with two kids needs carrying on the phone to her mum, I want to be the cashier at Lidl complaining how hungry she is, I want to be the purposeful manager in the boring uniform. I probably want to be you, whoever you are. I have no doubt anyone wouldn’t mind trading their lives for mine, even just for a day, and there are reasons I am not the other person, living that kind of life that I am looking at from the outside. Even I can’t believe my luck everyday, honestly. I know, I know. Not that I am rich or actually good at anything or have anything to show off. Maybe that’s why I am hooked to Eriko who embraces her vulnerability and sentimentality so recklessly.

The book also reminds me of someone ceased to talk to me since last year for reasons I couldn’t fathom (there may be a chance that I had been a prick but I can’t tell for sure), reminds me living in a city, reminds me when blog was popular during my teenage years, maybe also the days before social media becomes such a overgrown forest dominated by large canopy of big platform blocking all the daylight and sucking all the nutrient up from smaller voices. Hooked is a book that I like a lot. And I am happy to admit that.

Is this a book review? I don’t think so. Whatever.