REVIEW BOOK "CONFESSION" – A CHILLED, CRUEL & SHOCKING PSYCHOLOGICAL BOOK

Confession is one of the 10 best-selling books of 2009 written by Minato Kanae. The Japanese author's debut novel sold 3 million copies and was made into a movie just 1 year later. A book that is considered chilling & cruel about the topic of school education and teenage psychology.

High school is considered the "youth" of many people, bright with beautiful student love to the point that if this period of time is considered like a "shower", most of us are willing to go back to "get wet in the rain" once again.

So what about the time before that, adolescence, puberty? Do many people remember the time when they were “no longer children, but not quite adults” anymore? At the age of middle school students, many students rebelled, changing their psychology and personality. This is perfectly portrayed in the work Confession by Minato Kanae.

If you are thinking that this book begins to depict the naive and foolishness of adolescence such as gathering to fight with fellow students or smoking together, inviting each other to watch porn movies… then you are wrong.

Because the book is about murder. A middle school student intentionally kills a child. Moreover, this child is the child of the homeroom teacher.

How will you react when you receive the news that your beloved daughter has passed away, her body is found in the swimming pool at the school where you are teaching - the place where you feel the safest and most trustworthy. According to the police, this was just an accident, but you accidentally found an important clue that this was a murder and the perpetrator was none other than your student.

THE TEACHER'S CONFESSION

As the name of the book suggests, the 6 chapters of just over 200 pages are all about confession.

Chapter 1: The Preacher

Chapter 2: The Martyr

Chapter 3: The Benevolent

Chapter 4: The Seeker

Chapter 5: The Devout

Chapter 6: The Preacher

This is the story of teacher Moriguchi, a single mother with a 4-year-old daughter, but then on a normal Wednesday, her daughter's body was found in the school swimming pool.

An innocent 1-year-old child secretly brought bread near the school swimming pool where her mother taught to keep the stray dog from starving.

A child who should have had a peaceful childhood, a magical life. With an exemplary mother, a wonderful father.

But two of Ms. Moriguchi's students made that forever a thing of the past. Killing her and drowning her in the swimming pool, staging it as an accident! It was thought that this was just an accident like the police had determined, but the reality was cruel because the girl's death was a murder and the perpetrator was her homeroom student. And then she began her revenge plan. In turn, there were the teacher's, the class president's, student B's mother's accounts, then B's crazy confession, A's will, and finally, it ended with the teacher's phone call to student A. All the confessions started around the story of Manami, the teacher's daughter.

And the teacher knew it.

The teacher would take revenge. When the law is lenient with minors, she decides to conduct the trial herself in the last class of 7th grade. The trial actually takes place in the shock of all students and also makes readers "chill".

For those who love detective stories, they will surely read this first part and immediately think of the ending, guessing that in reality, the teacher will not inject blood into the milk for the other students to drink just to get revenge. Perhaps she just wants to threaten and cause psychological trauma for those who deserve to be punished for committing unforgivable crimes!

When reading the narrative lines of the class monitor in chapter 2, many readers will probably think that the judgment about the teacher pretending to take revenge is completely correct. Because in reality, no one is infected with HIV. The 2 cartons of milk that the 2 students drank were not actually injected with blood!

But once again, writer Minato Kanae surprised everyone, and that is why Confession deserves to be one of the best-selling books, and was even adapted into a movie.

THE TRUE MESSENGER

He appeared very faintly in the book, only mentioned a few times, but every time he shocked everyone. The teacher's final confession pointed out that the reason the milk carton was not contaminated with HIV blood was because it had been swapped. The swapper, the kind-hearted missionary, was none other than her husband, the child's father. He forgave his enemy because he believed that the two teenagers could become good people in the future.

We appreciate his forgiveness, but in terms of predicting the future and understanding the psychology of teenagers, perhaps he was wrong. Because the two students he thought would become useful people for society, one could not overcome his psychological trauma and stabbed his own mother to death. The other almost set off a bomb that killed the entire school!

Sometimes kindness, if misplaced, will cause such an unforeseeable disaster

THE KINDNESS OF A MOTHER – BLIND, EXTREMELY BLIND

If the compassion of the preacher who is willing to forgive those who killed his child can make readers feel warm, then the blind sacrifice of student B’s mother for her naive child makes us feel even more heartbroken.

Raising children has never been easy for women who are emotional and lack the necessary strictness. For Nao’s mother – student B in the opening confession, the love for her children killed her and destroyed her most beloved child, Naoki. All she did was deny all her child’s mistakes, under any circumstances. Even that blind love was more painful and heartbreaking when the child himself affirmed “you, you killed that child”, she still did not believe it, and then more miserable, she even planned to commit suicide with her child “my Naoki”!

All crimes start from family education, that truth is forever true. How much care, pampering or strictness with children is enough, that problem still makes every parent have a headache.

Pampering children too much is not good. So what if you abandon your child?

The answer: there will be more A students born.

Watatabe – Lost Genius

Student A, who planned to kill his teacher’s daughter. Who made a bomb to commit suicide with the whole school. Who killed his girlfriend and put her body in the refrigerator. Those short sentences are enough to describe the 8th grade student with genius intelligence but crazy psychology.

He was pitiful, creating an arrogant and indifferent exterior to hide a weak inner self. He despised all the stupid students in his class, because they dared to laugh at his genius inventions. Countdown timer, “anti-theft wallet”, lie detector… no one cared.

He did everything just to seek recognition, from a mother who abandoned him to find a career. He lived with an unloving father, leaving his children to live alone in a deserted place, not close enough to guide him to adulthood.

And as a result, with a distorted mentality due to the mistakes of adults, he understood in a distorted way that this world cared more about “shocking news, hot news” like serial killers, than genius inventions. And to get his mother’s attention, he had to kill people, be in the newspaper, become a topic of discussion in the media.

It is heartbreaking and chilling to read the "wills" told by this lost genius. Perhaps this book will make parents reconsider their own way of educating. At puberty, a child's psychology can easily be distorted if not guided properly. There will be many A students like Watatabe born, there will be many tragic cases happening, if parents do not teach and love their children properly. Perhaps this is also a stern warning from author Minato when writing this wonderful book Confession!

However, besides the good points, Confession still has an unfortunate minus point: the cruel ending for those who sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. Deceiving readers to create a strong and irresistible attraction, but the gloomy ending will be very difficult to become an introductory textbook on adolescent education.

It would have been better if the bomb had been frozen by the teacher so it wouldn’t explode, instead of blowing up a tall building!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR MINATO KANAE

Minato Kanae (born 1973) is a Japanese female novelist specializing in psychological novels. She entered her literary career quite late (at the age of 30), but her first work, Confession, was an excellent success and proved her writing ability. The work Confession became the best-selling book in 2009 and was adapted into a film in 2010 and was nominated for an Oscar for foreign language film in 2011. Following that success, Minato Kanae has released other works such as Atonement (),... Her works all have one thing in common: they always mention the darkest aspects of human beings combined with a creative writing style and sharp voice, which gives readers a chilling, dark feeling that is both disgusting and tense. That is why she is known as the "Queen of the Abominable Detective" - Iyamisu. Although the issues she mentions are always dark, hidden within them is the psychology of each character that she always analyzes clearly, helping readers better understand the actions of each character. Confession is a book with dark colors that are haunting and chilling. And the ending is still convincing. Unlike many other detective works, the author divided the story into five chapters and each chapter brings many surprises and tension to the reader, because we seem to be unable to predict anything.

The book was later adapted into a film, Confession, in 2010.