“Have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake? The shock of an old memory is kind of like that; every neuron singing a bright hosanna: here we are. You“Have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake? The shock of an old memory is kind of like that; every neuron singing a bright hosanna: here we are. You forgot about us, but we didn’t forget about you.”
Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a novella about a group of five friends that rent out a haunted Heian-era mansion in Japan for a small wedding, which is where the events of the book mainly transpire. With a spooky haunted mansion with a tragic history, emotional baggage between the group, and a black-toothed vengeful spirit, the story had all the tools for an amazing horror story, but unfortunately it just didn’t work for me. I didn’t find it even remotely scary, and the only thing that induced dread and horror was the prolix writing. The prose was ridiculously and excessively obscure and pretentious. I am not one to mind a bit of baroque language and flowery description, but the problem was that it was unnecessarily verbose and bombastic. It was painfully ill-placed in the text, adding nothing to the story, and rather made it frustratingly hard to read. Multiple nonsensical similes (for eg “her footsteps frictionless as envy” ???), or repetitive descriptions of a person followed almost every action or dialogue. This was so distracting and always obscured what was going on, that I had to repeatedly skip back and re-read paragraphs to remember what was going on or being talked about. Furthermore, the book really would have benefited from some footnotes or a glossary to explain all the Japanese terminology used casually without any clarifying context or explanation. As for the plot, I found to be fairly bland and unengaging, comprising mostly of petty arguments between the characters, with the horror element set aside(view spoiler)[ (and quite literally too, as the spirit just sits on the side while the characters argue) (hide spoiler)]. I soon grew sick of the contrived & vapid characters and their insipid melodrama, and it was really hard to care for them, even the main character. So what is left in a “horror story” if you don’t care what happens to the characters, rather hope the house eats them up, and the writing is annoying, you don’t know what is going on, and there is barely any plot or horror elements?...more
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