"Nails and Eyes" by Kaori Fujino is a spine-tingling journey into the depths of psychological horror. Set against the backdrop of family secrets and loss, Fujino crafts a chilling tale of obsession and indifference. As the young girl grapples with her new stepmother's eerie presence, the narrative grips you with its masterful control and builds to a conclusion of haunting power. With two additional stories adding to the tension, "Nails and Eyes" introduces a bold new voice in Japanese literature that will leave you breathless and unsettled.

three small stories. i wouldn’t consider them “scary” but creepy. and i did truly enjoy them. i wished there was more to all of the stories.

"Nails and Eyes" by Kaori Fujino is a collection of subtly disturbing Japanese literary horror stories that explore themes of obsession, family dynamics, and psychological tension. The novella within this collection features a young girl who has lost her mother, and her father invites his secret lover into their family home to care for her. As the child narrator tries to curate a perfect life, she becomes increasingly fixated on her stepmother's actions, ultimately leading to a disturbing and powerful conclusion. Alongside the novella, the collection includes two additional stories that delve into the complexities of the human mind and the eerie atmosphere of Japanese horror. "Nails and Eyes" introduces a unique voice in Japanese literature, offering readers a chilling and thought-provoking experience.

My favourite Japanese author's best work translated into English. I enjoyed the exquisite translation and the splendidness of this novel was not lost at all.

Thanks ever so much to @pushkin_press for sharing this title with me on @netgalley!

Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino, translated by Kendall Heitzman.

Sigh, this wasn’t for me, sadly. A series of short stories trying to do a lot with very little, but unfortunately I felt so detached from it all. One of the stories is written in the second person which is certainly a choice and not one that resonated with me. I felt very little connection to these stories and failed to see what was so unsettling and horror-like about them.

Really loved this paring of stories. Following the ‘girlfriend’ through her experience integrating/losing herself was creepy and touching.

I like this one! I'm a scaredy cat, so horror novels are not for me, but this one wasn't creepy or scary, but more on the EERIE side. The three short stories cover diverse topics like gender or the bond between a mother and a daughter. I liked the writing style and will be keeping my eyes peeled for more from the author.

Nails and Eyes provokes the uncanny and unease in the form of several short novels that are loosely tied to the other. The story which matches that of the title leaves the reader in my view questioning just what happened to Hina's birth mother, and if how she appears to be the narrator how truthful her perspective of her new step-mum is in regards to the perceived relationship with the bookseller. Fujino definitely plays with the notion of the unreliable narrator in a manner that drives a thriller, horror aspect. I would consider this an ideal autumnal season read - in the run up to Halloween as it has all the hallmarks of a good suspenseful tale, I would recommend to anyone who is a fan of other books within this genre for example - Sayaka Murata's Earthlings. You won't be disappointed!

Nails and Eyes might just be one of the best collections of short stories I have ever had the pleasure to read.

Admittedly, the first story was a little hard to read and would be for anyone squeamish about eye injuries!! But as a glasses wearer, I appreciated this story all the more for its relatability - thisbwroter truly gets what it's like to have vision problems, and expertly crafts a story to play on these fears but also entertain and satisfy the reader.

The rest of the collection are equally intriguing and the writing is strong throughout- I think the only negative is that I wished there were more ! I think there were only 3 stories in total but they were so riveting, I wanted more!

I read a lot of translated Japanese fiction, and quite a bit of Japanese horror as well - but this fell a little flat for me unfortunately. I think I'll pass on ordering for our collection.

I loved the quiet yet unsettling tension in these short stories, especially Nails and Eyes which sat with me long after I finished reading it.

Kaori Fujino’s Nails and Eyes is a collection of one novella and two short stories that straddle the line of disturbing. The title story, Nails and Eyes, is narrated by a three year old girl who despises woman destined to become her stepmom after the tragic death of her own mother on their apartment balcony. The young girl observes her father’s girlfriend with intense acuity, seeing beyond what the woman presents to the world. In the second story, What Shoko Forgets, an elderly woman in assisted living is seemingly assaulted every night, only to forget it again come morning. The last tale, Minute Fears, is about a mother attempting to assuage her son’s terrors of the neighborhood playground.

While I generally enjoyed these stories, Fujino leaves a lot to the reader’s interpretation and perception. I often wondered if I was missing something or if I had perceived the contents of the story correctly, getting out of it what I was supposed to. This left me with a less than satisfied feeling after reading this collection.

These three stories are engaging and intense, and exactly what you want out of a story designed to disturb. The author commands attention and control, and delivers a fresh and thought-provoking contribution to the world of Japanese horror/thriller literature.

The title story is worth getting the book alone - the 2 other short(er) stories are good, but the main event is what makes this a wonderfully creepy book. Told in the notoriously difficult 2nd-person the title story builds up such a sense of creepiness that it unsettles and surprises. And then you have to go back and read it again because you have just gone 'what?!?'.

A new author to me, but I will definitely be on the lookout for more in the future.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

This was definitely a very different read. I was very impressed with the way the author made these stories so subtle, yet so ominous at the same time. I think that this was a great read for people that really enjoy nuance and are drawn to the details. There was a novella and two short stories in this book and I was impressed. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley,

I devoured this book. A quick and very disturbing read, also superbly clever, it had me questioning characters in the book when I'd finished. And also going back and rereading bits to confirm that my suspicions were correct.

I loved the way it was written, and how the short stories left you guessing and theorizing what was the reason or meaning behind them. I particularly liked the last short story which played on the 'monster is in the house's trope.

Highly recommend picking up for an October Halloween read!

This was a collection of short but eery and disturbing stories that I couldn't put down. Nothing else to say other than read it you won't be disappointed if you are a fan of creepy insidious horror that you think about long after you've finished the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

The central story of Nails and Eyes follows a young girl’s perspective as her new stepmother moves in, shortly after the sudden and unexplained death of her mother. The girl seems to know everything about her stepmother, and her observations become sharper as time goes on. Nails and Eyes is accompanied by two other shorter stories, What Shoko Forgets and Minute Fears.

I did enjoy Nails and Eyes, however, I was expecting it to be somewhat more unsettling. It felt a bit subdued and I would have preferred a deeper dive into the girl’s feelings or the situations as they occurred.
I didn’t really understand the purpose of the second story, it felt slightly confused and unclear. I enjoyed the final story but it didn’t blow me away hugely.
Not my thing unfortunately, I had higher expectations for this one…

Intensi, inquietanti, disturbanti, questi racconti si aggiungono a letture che dipingono un Giappone ben lontano dall'incantevole, equilibrato, raffinato Paese che ci immaginiamo in Occidente. Tutte le distorsioni della società, incarnate nei singoli individui, nutrono una narrativa che difficilmente arriva in Italia, impegnata a importare romanzi ben più leggeri e incoraggianti, lontani dall'inquietante profondità di questa raccolta.

A mini-collection of Japanese shorter fiction. We start with a promising novella, a very eerie, atmospheric study in female-centered horror. The narrator is a girl-child, one recalling with eerie clarity things that happened when she was three years old. A woman now lives in her mother's place, after mother dies in peculiar and suspicious circumstances. The story's narrated in the ever-chest-pokey second person to "you," who is the replacement her father brings into their lives for dead, blogger-mom mother. The problem is that "you" has terrible vision, is a terrible judge of character in trusting the father and the daughter, and never quite coheres as more than a collection of those kinds of heavy-handed symbolic traits. What really threw me out of the narrative flow was the fact that I'm somehow supposed to believe this is a child's memories. I'm just too literal-minded for that to work. Three-year-olds are still pretty iffy with object permanence and a robust theory of mind hasn't had a chance to develop. Therefore, this is not realistic. I know it's not supposed to be. But I need its hows and whys not to be unexplained if it's going to require me to suspend my disbelief from a noose twelve feet up.

<U>What Shoko Forgets</u> isn't very interesting as horror, being a ghastly case of elder abuse and failing memory covering up the perpetrator; far too close to my own life's circumstances for me to think anything except "WHERE IS THE CASE MANAGER?!"

Lastly there was <U>Minute Fears</u> which, sad to say, was an unmemorable story of a little boy's deeply off-kilter perception of and obsession with the kami-spirit of a park, told by his bemused mother; the abrupt, somewhat silly ending just reinforced how underdeveloped the whole felt to me, as well as so short I got very little impression of its players.

I liked the unsettling mismatch of the tone to the subjects. I strongly suspect, and even hope, that others with less onerously literal minds will try this very, very short (took me two hours from start to finish) Spooky-Season selection for their Oktoberreads.