I have first encountered Higashino Keigo's story through a film, The devotion of Suspect X. It was a truly amazing story. All the details were carefully devised and planned and the characters carried their own charms. Of course, some of the charms may due to the good actings of those actors and actresses who played the part. But there was no denying that the story and the characters were good.

 

Getting curious about the writer's other stories, I bought this book. And the writer, again, did not fail to amuse me.

 

A mother and a daughter get into an accident and, it appears that the mother died and the daughter stayed alive. But the father realises that it is actually the mother's spirit that is inside the daughter's body.

 

The relationship between them begins to get complicated. On the one hand, the body is that of the daughter but on the other hand, the content (the spirit) is the mother.

 

Their relationship gets so complicated to the extent that the father gets jealous of the daughter/mother receiving a boy's attention and tries to take her body. And even before that, there is the part when the daughter/mother tries to conduct sexual acts with the father despite being in the daughter's body.

 

Those parts sickened me and still sicken me a great deal. But then again, the writer is a Japanese living in Japan where the concept of incest is not so very negative as it is in the other cultures.