All She Was Worth - [short] Book Review
In the month of April, I was able to read three books, which is a first for me. Generally, I take my time reading and interpreting a book, and then take my time to ponder over its contents. Well, I’ll be honest — two of the books (The Blue Flower by Fitzgerald and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson) were lesson requirements, but I enjoyed reading these books nonetheless. While I finished reading those books in a week’s time, it took me a while to complete Miyabe’s All She Was Worth.
Miyabe’s 1992 novel All She Was Worth is a crime fiction set around the same time period of its publication. Despite its third-person narration, the story mainly follows an aging and recently physically disabled detective, Honma. When his late wife’s relative strangely shows up on his doorstep on a snowy evening, Honma is presented with a missing person’s case, which he handles privately. However, what appears to be a missing person’s report turns into a nightmare of personal bankruptcy, identity theft and conclusive death.
This is the first novel of Miyabe’s I’ve come across and I’m entranced by her compelling use of language and dialogue. Often times, the dialogues in a novel can come across as stiff, which affects the overall reading-process. But while reading Miyabe’s book I must admit, each of the characters had distinct voices. When writing a novel, it’s important for the writer to be able to distinguish all the characters with the help of dialogue and their personality. Homna, in my perspective, sounded interested and mature and experienced. As a detective, he knew how to communicate and interrogate people, and it was not coerced, which is commonly seen in movies or shows.
The reason behind why I enjoyed my reading experience with this book is because of how Miyabe smoothly carries us all over Japan, with little steps. We are following in Honma’s limping steps, slowly yet steadily. We go from Tokyo to Ginza to Utsunomiya to Osaka to track down the missing fiancée of Jun, Honma’s late “wife’s cousin’s son”. We slowly uncover that Shoko Sekine, the missing girl, is not who she claims she is.
The important part in the novel is to follow the time period of the whole disappearance. Everything in the novel is just theories in the beginning, they don’t really have the “real” evidence but they get the whole idea. This was intriguing because generally every case has to have concrete proof but in the novel one is just presented with a polaroid, CVs, registration documents, and questionnaires. Apart from that, there are instances told from witnesses or people who knew the “real” Shoko Sekine and the one who is pretending to be her. I really wanted to know how the police force was going to incriminate the identity theft but somehow the story ended with just meeting her eye-to-eye.
The entire time we were chasing after a phantom — half of the time I questioned if either of the girls were even alive or not, and the other half I wondered if they willingly exchanged their lives. We only (and finally) see the impersonator towards the last 2–3 pages of the novel, which is terrifying, really. Firstly, she pretended to be someone else and second, she has murdered not one but two girls just to get away from her miserable life of personal bankruptcy. Where has she been this entire time? You’re actually left to wonder that because the book ends on that note. It’s an engaging way to communicate with the reader: to tell them “it’s up to your imagination”.
Although the book is written in the late 20th century, you learn so much more about the advancement of technology at the time; the plot basically encompasses it. Not only do we learn how credit cards function, we also learn about computerized data. As an individual living in the modern 21st century with the latest technological advancements, it might sound odd, right? Well, not really. It certainly is tiring to read all that information, but it helps you navigate the main plot, which is to discover the missing girl. It’s because of all the credit card information we discover the personal bankruptcy record; it’s because of all the computerized data we uncover the despicable truth behind the motive of the impersonator.
Miyabe’s novel All She Was Worth shows us the tragic and grim reality of people that experience bankruptcy. It displays that some people are willing to fight against it and others will do everything to evade it. While the people that are willing to fight against it might die, the people that avoid it will eventually get caught. Towards the end of the book, you are left questioning yourself how far you’d go to have a better and secure life. Life can be unfair to so many of us, but it depends on us on how to fight against the odds it brings forth in the right way. It will certainly be difficult, may appear impossible, but it is never a hopeless case. If one should fall, it’s our responsibility as a human to understand and lift them up. If their load is heavy, sit down with them to help remove the burden. If it should be light, make sure they don’t feel burdened.
I may have side-tracked there, but this novel really did get me thinking that there are all sorts of people in this world — helpless people, frightening people, miserable people. I definitely recommend reading this novel at least once. It surely has a slow pace, after all we are following in Honma’s steps, so we must be respectful and cautious. I look forward to reading more of Miyabe’s works. Towards its ending, All She Was Worth promises its readers that they would know the real story rather than what they hear from the mouths of strangers the entire time. While it is left to our imagination, one can say that justice will be served.
