The Gun by Fuminori Nakamura

(hb; 2003: novella. Translated from the French by Allison Markin Powell.)

From the inside flap

“On a nighttime walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a deadly body, beside which lies a gun. From the moment Nishikawa decides to take the gun, the world around him blurs. Knowing he possesses the weapon brings an intoxicating sense of purpose to his dull university life.

“But soon Nishikawa’s personal entanglements become unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women while his biological father, whom he’s never met, lies dying in a hospital. Through it all, he can’t stop thinking about the gun─and the four bullets loaded in its chamber. As he spirals into obsession, his focus is consumed by one idea: the possessing the gun is no longer enough─he must fire it.”

Review

Like Toru Narazaki in Cult X, Nishikawa─The Gun's protagonist─ is an unfocused young man whose life is a narcissistic, nihilistic void. When he finds the gun, his slow, downward spiral accelerates.

I admire Nakamura’s obvious talent: even in a depressingly familiar tale like this, it shines. Unfortunately, as is the case with Cult X, I did not relate with Nishikawa’s lazy apathy nor his fetishistic fascination with the gun. (This leads me to wonder, again, if this is an age thing─I am in my late forties─or is this an era-specific cultural thing?)

Gun is not an entirely disappointing book. It has scenes that are good, but ultimately it feels pointless, an overlong writing exercise with an unlikeable character whose fate is mapped out for the reader early on. While I did not expect nor require a happy ending, I did not care about Nishikawa or his doomed trajectory enough to appreciate Gun the way other readers might.

Gun, with its promising flashes of clever insight, is best borrowed from the library, or purchased for a low price. If you want to check out Nakamura’s other works, I would recommend The Thief, its thematic counterpart The Kingdom and my favorite of the bunch, Evil and the Mask.