Now You're One of Us

Although Nonami's macabre thriller was a bestseller in Japan, and the author was won multiple prizes in her native country, American readers may well wonder what the fuss was all about. New bride Noriko is adjusting to her new life as a member of her husband Kazuhito Shito's large family, when she's accosted by a merchant who rents property from the Shitos. The merchant makes an oblique comment before fleeing. The brief, if unsettling, encounter achieves more prominence for Noriko after she learns that the man and his family died in a propane explosion, and she eavesdrops on a conversation that suggests her in-laws were complicit in the tragedy. The plot device of a naïve woman gradually becoming more and more isolated as she's drawn into the suffocating embrace of a sinister family is a familiar one to those who've either read Rosemary's Baby or seen the movie, and Nonami fails to offer anything new to the theme.