Ring by Koji Suzuki

Translated by: Robert B. Rohmer and Glynne Walley

Read April 2004
Copy borrowed from Ramsey County Public Library, Roseville Branch
Essay written April 17th, 2004

It's just been a long time since I've written a book response essay thing here. I really should get back into the habit. Or just into the habit, since I never was really in it before, for getting back now.

I picked this up from the New Books shelves at the library because of its eye-popping jacket design. By Chip Kidd, of course. The dust jacket description caught my attention so I gave it a try. Plus, it's Japanese.

The commercials for the movie "The Ring" were pretty freaky, whenever that was. A year ago? Two? I don't remember. I'm not a horror movie fan anyway so I never saw it, although I had heard that it was good. Started reading this book, knowing that it could be pretty intense, and it did start out that way. But then it turned out to be more of a detective story, these two adult men trying to figure out what exactly happened to these four unfortunate teenagers, and why, and how to prevent the same thing happening to them. Pretty captivating and haunting, although not keep-you-awake-at-night-thinking-about-it terrifying like House Of Leaves or The Turn Of The Screw. Which was fine by me. I didn't want it to be disturbingly scary like that. And the potentially apocalyptic ending was great, opening the story wide for the second and third books in the series, Spiral and Loop, not yet published in English at this time (the former comes out next month).

A buddy of mine at work told me about the movie and it sounds disturbing. His descriptions of some of the creepier scenes make me think that I'm not interested. Images freak me out more than my imagination does, since my imagination can be selective in self-defense.

This book's presence on the New Books shelves makes me wonder about my library's criteria for determining when a book is new or old. The label inside the back cover indicates that this copy was entered into the system on 07/21/03. It's April now. Is a book that's nine months old still new? Evidently. I suppose that's not too unreasonable. Maybe even a year makes sense.