2015 ALEX Award List: Confessions

 Minato, K. (2008). Confessions: A novel (S. Snyder, trans. 2014). New York: Little, Brown and Company. 

Set in Japan, a teacher's 4 year old daughter "accidently" dies by drowning in the school pool.  Authorities rule it as a drowning, however the teacher, Moriguchi, isn't convinced that this is what happens when she finds further evidence.  She is able to get two of her students to confess.  The story is narrated by the different characters, each telling their point of view.  On the last day of school, Moriguichi tells the class why she is retiring and that two of their classmates were actually the ones of killed her daughter.  She proceeds to tell them that she put the blood from her ex-fiance, which contained HIV,  in their carton of milk so they would have some repercussions for what they did.  One of the students, Naoki, isn't able to handle the fact that he actually killed her by throwing her in the pool.  He is unable to return to school the next year and becomes mentally unstable.  He eventually kills his mother also.  The other student, Shuya, is mad that his plan to electricute the little girl with his home made zipper pouch did not work to make him famous.  He builds a bomb and plans to detonate it during a ceremony in order to kill many people.  Moriguichi finds out and removes the bomb, planting it at a university where Shuya's mother works.  He detonates it, not knowing it had been moved.  It is at that point that Moriguichi feels that she got her revenge on the two boys, without them going to jail.

This was a difficult book for me to read.  The narrator was switching back in forth in different times.  Each chapter was written about a specific person involved in the story, whether it be the mother of the accused, or the sister. The intended audience is high school students, although I am not sure I would want my child reading about these dangerous children.  I can absolutely see this book being used in a psychology class, picking apart the characters and their actions.  It does contain some graphic words near the end that definitely help the reader visualize what is happening.

See the book trailer Here.