I recently finished the book Hooked by Asako Yuzuki.

Spoiler Alert! Please do not read on if you haven’t read the book yet, I don’t want to spoil the story for you.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

The book is about how Eriko and Shoko, two women from different socio classes, career trajectory, and life perspectives, met, interacted, and ultimately changed each other.

Shoko was a stay-at-home wife, and was worry-free. Eriko was single, and had a stable career in a prominent company. She is very task oriented and was dedicated to her work.

Despite the differences, they had many things in common.

They seemed to be content with their lives. However, they were truly not.

They did not have any female friends and lived in their own bubbles. Eriko longed to have a close friend who she could share her stories and thoughts with while Shoko hid away from her unhappy countryside childhood and escaped to Tokyo where she had a loving and easy going husband who was willing to provide for her.

Shoko, the stay-at-home wife, started a blog which became quite popular for connecting with women who did not want to rise up to the expectations of society as a wife, and Eriko was a big fan of Shoko’s blog. Eriko met Shoko in a local restaurant and they eventually became friends after a few meetings. However, their friendship cracked because Eriko showed up at Shoko’s building one day out of concern for Shoko after Shoko went away for a few days and did not return Eriko’s messages.

From there, in matters of months, their lives altered. Eriko went through an extremely hard time after being rejected and alienated by Shoko. Shoko’s life changes were not much less unremarkable. She went through a phase of life that she was pushed to reconcile with who she really was behind the identity she represented in her blog, her relationship with her husband and her father, and everyone.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS BOOK

What I love about this book is that it did not try to take a side. It rather aims at telling the stories from the points of view of both women, especially their upbringing, to explain their feelings, behaviours, and their desires. There was no right or wrong, there were just feelings, actions, thought processes, and growths. I love that the book focuses on growth: how their relationships reshape who they are and truly make them into stronger women.

There is one sentence that was repeated twice. Eriko’s saying when she met with Shoko in their uncomfortable and cringey holiday trip to an onsen: We are both the same, what sets us apart is… and Shoko concluded… the people that brought them up.

In the end, Shoko understood Eriko’s extreme behaviours as Shoko ended up in a separation with her husband and isolated by everyone else. Eriko got to hear her mom’s feelings and perspectives, reconnected with her mom and her estranged childhood friend, Keiko.

Keiko, a victim of Eriko’s extreme jealousy behaviours, a sore female “failure” in the eye of Eriko, is actually the source of much wisdom in the story. Keiko’s view of friendships helps me understand a lot of my own past and current friendships and relationships.

“… friendships that last forever only really exist in stories. I feel like the only way of vacuum-packing that moment when friendship shines its brightest and preserving it would be…

I think all relationships reach a peak”.

“I think it’s when two people separate that the things they have learned through their friendship can really blossom. It is all well to stand on the sidelines and laugh at women for gossiping, and complaining, and comforting each other in a shallow, superficial way. But who’s to say that the ruthless urge to get at the truth, regardless of whether it breaks the other person’s heart, is more virtuous than phrasing your words carefully, out of consideration for another person? I understand now what a talent it is to show care for other people. I’ve always ridiculed it, could never be bothered with it, and that’s why I’m where I am now, with nothing.”

“I feel as though women’s optimism, cheerfulness, all the skills they have to make the little moments enjoyable, make them sparkle like fireworks – even if those qualities don’t solve anything, they still bring salvation for a lot of people who encounter them. TO go back to what we were saying before: what if, while those two girls who were once friends were chatting to each other on the street, two schoolgirls went past on one bike. They’d see it, and laugh. I feel like that one moment is enough, to make it all worth-while.”

The book, through Shoko’s stories, encourages women to face our fears and have the difficult conversations with people we love. Maybe things are not the way we tell ourselves. Maybe only through the frank talk that differences and conflicts can be reconciled. This is something I have to learn myself as well.

The book is titled Hooked as the author uses the metaphor of the Nile Perch, a pervasive fish species which kills other fish. The main question throughout the book was whether Eriko or Shoko was the Nile Perch–the predatory fish and who was the prey; whether one would end up swallowing the other. In the end, I don’t think the book said one way or the other; both lost but also won a little through their own personal growth.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

This book brings forward an extreme but real story of how difficult women in the modern age can connect and be friends with each other. It illustrates how a woman’s upbringing, social expectations, and families can impact their perspectives which hampers their ability to connect with and understand other women.

It is perfect, in my opinion, for women who are struggling with friendships to understand why someone would have extreme or unexplainable behaviours and if the differences are irreconcilable.

Next book: Butter by Asako Yuzuki