I read Hooked by Asako Yuzuki in one of this summer’s many heatwaves and devoured it mostly in a single day. It is just as good as Butter by the same author and continued my vein of reading quirky Japanese fiction.

Hooked is the story of two young women in Tokyo, Eriko, who still lives at home with her parents and has a successful career in the fish import business, and Shoko, who writes an anti-tradwife blog about being married, not working, not having kids and doing very little for her husband. An unlikely pair, they begin a friendship which quickly turns sour when Eriko becomes obsessed with Shoko and won’t leave her alone.

Eriko begins to question her marriage and whether she really wants to do nothing, whilst Shoko gets into increasing difficulties at work, begins behaving very erratically, changing her appearance dramatically and slumping into a spiral of decline when Shoko has enough. Meanwhile, Shoko has a confession to make to her husband and has to face her father, who she has a difficult relationship with.

This novel about female friendship, what is required of women in modern Japan, and the choices we make, is both fascinating and delightful.