Steve-Calvert.co.uk
Steve-Calvert.co.uk
A Passion For Horror
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If you are not familiar with the name Koji Suzuki, you will most likely be familiar with his work. Koji was the guy who wrote The Ring. Chances are, if you haven't read the novel, you will have seen the film.
First let me tell you, Dark water isn't a novel, but a collection. It consists of a prologue and an epilogue with 7 short stories between them. All of the stories have a common theme - water. In the prologue we meet Kayo and her grand-daughterYuko and find them as they are enjoying a stroll down the beach. Many things are washed up on the beach and the conversation turns to treasure. Yukon asks her grand-mother if she has ever found any treasure there while on her morning walks. Kayo admits that she has and promises her that she will give her the treasure on one condition. Yukon must accompany her on her walks for a full week. It isn't until the epilogue that we find out what that treasure is. There is little use just skipping to the end of the book either, because, unless you have read the stories in between, it just won't make sense to you.
Floating Water is the first of these stories, and it is this story that the film Dark Water was based on. Although, if you have already seen the film, you will find that there are a lot of differences between the onscreen version and Mr Suzuki's original creation. I've seen the film. I liked it. I also like the print version. It's both spooky and unsettling. I much prefer the ending in the book to that of the film, but that's just a personal thing.
The other 6 stories are: Solitary Isle, The hold, Dream Cruise, Adrift, Watercolours, and Forest Under The Sea. All of the stories in Dark Water are very different and I did enjoy them. The only problem that I had with reading this book was the names of the characters. I found it hard to remember who was who. With names like Sasaki and Katsumi, Hiroyuki and Kazuo I had a bit of a problem. I think that if I had been reading one of the author's longer works, like The Ring, I would have had more time to get to know the characters involved and it wouldn't have been such a problem for me. But what can you do? The stories are all set in Japan so the characters have to have Japanese names. Changing the names to Jo and Danny etc, to suit a western audience, just wouldn't have worked.
To round this review up, I'll just say that Dark Water wasn't an easy read and it was a little hard for me to get into, but I did enjoy it and do plan on reading more of this author's work. My overall favourite in the book, by the way, was The Hold. The ending managed to take me totally by surprise. |
