Description

When Yuko Moriguchi’s four-year-old daughter died in the middle school where she teaches, everyone thought it was a tragic accident.

It’s the last day of term, and Yuko’s last day at work. She tells her students that she has resigned because of what happened – but not for the reasons they think.

Her daughter didn’t die in an accident. Her daughter was killed by two people in the class. And before she leaves, she has a lesson to teach…

But revenge has a way of spinning out of control, and Yuko’s last lecture is only the start of the story. In this bestselling Japanese thriller of love, despair and murder, everyone has a confession to make, and no one will escape unharmed.

Publisher Review

Explosive... A dark thriller about love, despair and murder * Irish Tatler * Think of CONFESSIONS as the Gone Girl of Japan....[A] gut-wrenching thrill ride...its thrust should hit home for any reader with a pulse. It's a nauseating tale of morality and justice, with violent turns that will drop your jaw right to the floor * Los Angeles Times * Has the captivating quality of a gruesome car crash: As the murders grow bloodier and bloodier, the characters more and more twisted, we find ourselves fascinated and repulsed, unable to look away * New Republic * A reader is almost certain to be caught off guard more than once by the revelations of this award-winning best seller....Implacable, relentless * Wall Street Journal * Minato's intricate plotting and unnervingly understated sentences make the horrors follow each other as logically as pearls on a string * NPR * A spellbinding read, a fascinating peek into modern Japanese society, and a glimpse into the dark corners of the human psyche * Booklist * A creepy and mesmerizing psychological thriller that challenges the conventions of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, and law vs. justice. There are no happy endings here, but Minato has pieced together an intriguing puzzle that will keep readers glued to their seats * Library Journal * A nasty little masterpiece...That rare creature in fiction: an ambitious investigation into the darkest corners of human nature that - unlike certain relatively sluggish models by Dostoevsky and Camus that Minato references here - is also a crackling good yarn * Chicago Tribune * A dark, dystopic portrait of Japanese adolescence gone wrong. If Albert Camus had written Heathers, it would have looked a lot like this. * Alex Marwood, author of THE WICKED GIRLS *