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Dec 14, 2007

Emily rated it:

This is a fast, absorbing read that is a great way to start off the holiday season. I probably should have waited till I was done grading, because I kept coming back to read this book.

Stylistically, it is very repetitious, but in a good way. One of the other reviewers (who didn't like it) gives an example of this and there are other examples online, if you feel the need to preview it before visiting your bookstore or library. The reoccurring objects and phrases that increasingly tak More...

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Oct 25, 2007

Kelly rated it:

This is a gritty, dark, and disturbing crime thriller, the first in a trilogy by David Peace. The setting is postwar Tokyo; the defeated city is rife with disease, destruction and death. The Japanese are battling the 'victors' and gangs of Chinese and Koreans bent on revenge and looking to profit. The protagonist, Detective Minami, is a broken man with a sleeping pill addiction, a mistress, and a struggling family. The bodies of two murdered young women are discovered and the Tokyo Metropolitan More...

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Feb 18, 2010

Kate rated it:

Tokyo Year Zero is unrelentingly miserable. A revolving recurrence of the same events, punctuated by endlessly repeated fragments of the narrator’s stream of consciousness, hammering, scratching, and ticking, it is also, at least in parts, nigh on incomprehensible.

Tokyo, August 1946: as Japan suffers its defeat by American forces, the bodies of two women are found in Shiba Park. Crumbling Detective Minami is assigned to the case and, faced with the horrors he encounters during the investigat More...

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Feb 06, 2012

Ian rated it:

This is a very complicated book that was difficult to read and left you with the feeling that more had gone on under the surface than I could tell.

Any book that comes with a dictionary for converting Japenese to English is going to be complicated, but you can add to that the device of using repetition and constructing sentances in ever decreasing length so they look like a guillotine.

The book is set in 1946 and concerns the state of the japense nation following the loos of th More...

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Oct 24, 2011

Blackkit10 rated it:

This is the worst book I have ever read. It was so bad I’m angry about it. James Ellroy gives a great review of this book and I want to personally ask him how he could find this book acceptable in any way?
I don’t know if this style of writing has an official name but throughout the entire story the author continually repeats himself exactly line after line, paragraph after paragraph. Example: I walk in the hot sun, the sun is like fire, I wipe my neck, the city is black. I walk in the hot More...

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Oct 03, 2011

Andrew rated it:

It's a point of pride that I can count on one hand the number of novels I have failed to finish. Good or bad I always feel the only fair way to judge a novel is to get yourself through to the end, then give an honest appraisal. So with that in mind, I'm not sure what's more surprising: that I managed to finish this book, or that I didn't throw it away half-way through. I was vaguely aware that the first novel in David Peace's trilogy was notoriously difficult, but I wasn't aware of the specifics More...

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Sep 22, 2011

Patrick rated it:

David Peace has been something of revelation for me recently. Some how he escaped my notice until I saw the film version of his novel The Damned United. Then I read about the BBC produced screen versions of his Little Red Riding Hood series abut a serial murderer in Yorkshire. Then there were rave reviews of his latest novel, Occupied City in Harper's and the NY Times. I then knew I would have to start with Tokyo Year Zero since it is the first volume of a proposed three book series set in Japan More...

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Mar 12, 2011

Tim rated it:

The sad irony of completing this book just before and reviewing it just after the latest major earthquake in Japan is not lost on me.

The book is set amongst disaster - a hint of an earlier devastating Earthquake that hit Tokyo directly in 1923 is overshadowed by the triple moral horror of Japanese atrocities in China in the 1930s, the downright evil Allied firebombing of the civilian population and the humiliation of occupation.

This is a crime novel written by a Briton w More...

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Mar 30, 2010

John rated it:

I don't think I've ever encountered this before: a high-modernist crime novel. Postmodernist, yes (Paul Auster); sort-of-modernist-but-still-pulp-fiction, yes (Jim Thompson, especially the final pages of One Hell of a Woman). But this search for a serial killer in Occupied Japan (Tokyo 1946, the "Year Zero" of the title) is as concerned with its use of language as with its mystery. And honestly, that was the problem; the suck-you-in-and-pull-you-along nature of tradition crime fict More...

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Feb 28, 2010

Bridget rated it:

A very long time ago, someone close to people I cared about got murdered. For weeks, every lurid headline made me shudder, hoping they hadn't seen it. I swore off crime fiction for years afterwards, no longer having any tolerance for the death of someone's loved one being reduced to a plot device. And for exactly that reason, there's a lot of crime fiction I still really can't bear.

What I admire most about David Peace his ability to make real grief and hurt and loss. Yes, there are m More...

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Sep 21, 2010

F.R. rated it:

The last time I saw David Peace, with his staccato tics and repetitions, he was dealing with hard men in Yorkshire. The Red Riding tetralogy was over and instead I was watching Brian Clough do battle with a truculent Leeds United side, but it was still Yorkshire and it was still decidedly grim up North. ‘Tokyo Year Zero’ sees Peace’s focus switch to Japan after the Second World War, yet despite this change of setting and culture, it still seems very familiar.

Peace’s style is of cour More...

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Oct 13, 2009

Flannery rated it:

this book is depressing, it´s disturbing, it shines a certain light on Japan, that one tends to ignore, if one is a Japan-Fan, as I am. Why should one read this book? Because it´s a literary and psychological diamond.

From the beginning the reader is stuck in the head of the protagonist and that is not a nice place to be. The policeman has a haunting past and swerves constantly on the verge to madness. He is nervous, ill, and he is unbearably afraid. The story is about a serial kille More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Derek rated it:

In Tokyo 1946: Japan is utterly defeated, the city reduced to ruins, the clock was stopped and may not yet have started again. Social order barely functions. Anyone could have been anyone only a year before (no one is who they say they are). A murder investigation results in some darker corners becoming lit up: things that should have stayed secret are exposed to view.

This is a stunning book, but it can be really very tough going at times: you have to slow down and pay attention, stick with the More...

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Apr 09, 2010

Tony rated it:

Set in immediate post WW II Japan. A detective links a vicious killer of women to his crimes while he, the detective, experiences a personal dissolution. This critically-highly-touted book has an aphoristic Japanese modernist prose format laid over a crime story. The format would be annoying, but all right and perhaps generative of a more elevated perception of human affairs were the story better. The tale is apparently historical. Who cares? You write a novel, you need to write a story. More...

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Mar 30, 2010

Esteban rated it:

March 27; Page 1, naively optimistic

I dreamt that Captain Kangaroo was working as a bartender last night. He was the same as I remember him, except he didn't have that velour-looking sports coat on. He was wearing a black cowboy shirt with the sleeves artfully ripped off and his hair was all spiky. I woke up before I had a chance to order a drink from him. Maybe it's time I started that David Peace book that's come in down at the library.

March 28; Page 35, how'd I get thi More...

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Jul 17, 2010

Iain rated it:

I'll read anything David Peace does. He's a very very good writer brilliant at describing the psychogeography and setting of a novel with his repetative prose and frequent internal monologues. You really get a feeling for the chaos of occupied Japan in this novel, a devastated Tokyo full of sickness and corruption, its internal structure and organisation in ruins. Peace lived in Tokyo for nearly 15 years and this is the first of a Tokyo trilogy. But it's only 3 stars because I think he's treadin More...

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Feb 25, 2010

Johnny rated it:

This is the second book of Peace's that I've read. There something about his repetitive, claustrophobic style that works for me, although I can't quite put my finger on why it works. I can see many of its flaws, but I don't care.

I don't know how a book that is utterly humorless can be so thoroughly entertaining. Everything about the story is over-the-top, wallowing in the desperation of the story and setting, yet it retains the earnestness of a teenage poet.

The best co More...

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Oct 27, 2011

Gardy rated it:

David Peace costruisce detective stories da 4 stelline.
Non manca niente; la perfetta, quasi maniacale ricostruzione storica del Giappone sotto il dominio di MacArthur, dello spirito stesso del popolo giapponese. Un serial killer storicamente esistito, un caso appassionante, un detective ai margini, un giallo dal ritmo sempre più concitato fino l'esplosivo, drammatico finale.
Eppure le stelline sono tre. Sì. David Peace è un grande scrittore è il suo marchio di fabbrica è il suo stile More...

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Apr 25, 2010

Nick rated it:

If you've read the reviews, you'll understand that this is a police procedural as guided tour of the hell of post-WWII Tokyo as told by a very screwed up, should I say Dostoyevskian cop narrator. One with Tourette's. One who likes blank verse. One who enjoys forcing the reader to endure long, repetitive, irritating word games in order to pluck out the remains of a plot. I admired some of what Peace is doing here, and I kept on reading, but the raves from certain critics seem overblown to me. I h More...

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Jul 03, 2011

Teresa rated it:

I had seen IFC's Red Riding Trilogy, and enjoyed the films enough to want to read some of David Peace's books. Tokyo Year Zero is part one of the "Tokyo Trilogy," which takes place during US-occupied Japan. It is a very dark story, and, at times is difficult to read. The narrative is a little jarring, as it jumps between a sort of conscious to sub-conscious stream of thought. I found it incredibly interesting to read a story about this time-period, from the narrator's perspective, but More...

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Dec 30, 2010

Daniel rated it:

I was quite impressed by this book for many reasons, the foremost being that I really felt like I was inside a japanese mind, despite the author. And even without the post-war destruction and misery and the actual crime itself on which the book centers, its a pretty scary place to be, if only because it is so different from the usual western background, values, thought process. Throw in the rest in this is a difficult book to take in - you can almost see the misery jump out of the pages, and you More...

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Jan 26, 2012

Crystal rated it:

For a junior in high school, Peace's unique writing style and his habit of liberally mixing in memories and thoughts with on-going conversations was confusing and sometimes hard to keep track of. However, for a junior in college, 'Tokyo Year Zero' took on a completely different appearance. It was now a dark story, with even darker shadows cast by some unknown past event that continually haunts the main character, Detective Minami. Peace shows Post-War Japan using Minami's thought patterns, Japan More...

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Mar 08, 2011

Godzilla rated it:

I guess David Peace's style is something you either like or loathe. If you've read his Red Riding Quartet then this will provide no new revelations, merely a different backdrop to the action.

Which for me is not a criticism: the charcters and language are gritty and seem at odds with the underlying "politeness" of Japanese society and tradition.

However, we're dealing with the post war, post atom bomb, Japan in this novel (I'm calling it that, despite it being anc More...

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Oct 22, 2009

Greenockian rated it:

What an experience this book is. For the first time in my life I ended up feeling sympathy for the Japanese who survived WW2. The abiding memories are of filth, squalor, itching and scratching while eking out an existence. The murders are almost inconsequential - which I would imagine is one of the points Peace is trying to make in the light of events in Manchuria and the dropping of the A bombs on Japan. The only negatives are that some of the style does intrude - repetition is fine if you're More...

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May 16, 2011

AnneKristine rated it:

I got this as an audio book from the library for my hours of commute time. I really tried to listen to it but finally gave up. Hearing it read was sometimes mesmerizing and added to the effect, for example, as he was scratching lice it would repeat "scratch,karikari" over and over. Some of it was so brutal and I didn't need to hear the vivid detail repeated over...and over...and over....and over....and over.I started counting how many times things were repeated. I never did really unde More...

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Oct 24, 2009

Mike rated it:

A very dark tale of murder and despair. Set in the post-WWII ruins of Japan, this book takes us through the mind of a detective as he tries to find a vicious killer. It captures both the tone of the times (his background agrees with other histories I have read of the postwar period) and the fatigue and frustration felt by those trying to live and work in them. I thought that the development of the characters, the story and overall book were quite good. I was not (and have not looked it up) f More...

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Nov 19, 2010

Bob rated it:

One of the darkest, most unrelentingly dark, novels I've ever read. In addition to being a crime noir thriller, it's really a historical period piece that unless your well-versed in Japanese history would probably be very hard to follow. Evocatively captures what life in a devastated and occupied post-war Japan meant. The author provides a glossary of most Japanese terms used in the novel, but I think it would have benefited from some judicious footnotes at points. Some not minor plot points hin More...

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Apr 14, 2009

Jim rated it:

Apparently based on a true story, this novelization brings the reader into the mind of a troubled Japanese police detective struggling to capture and bring to justice a serial rapist/killer. The protagonist also must deal with shifting alliances, the Japanese underground as it struggles against foreign competition, and conditions wrought upon a proud people by occupation of the country by the victorious Allies at the conclusion of World War II. Minami also must deal with his complicity in atroci More...

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Sep 24, 2010

Ipswichblade rated it:

I am a big fan of David Peace. I loved his Red Riding Quartet, GB84 and The Damned United is superb. Peace's books are not an easy or comfortable read in either the descriptions or the way he writes them and certainly this one is not a book you can skim read. Set in Tokyo just after the second world war the book tells the story of a detective investigating the murders of young girls. This however is no whodunnit, it is the story of corruption, murder and gang wars. Peace's descriptions of everyt More...

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Mar 05, 2009

Sarah rated it:

I got this as part of librarything’s early reviewers program. I was super excited about getting the book, because it was supposed to be about a serial killer investigation in Japan during the time immediately after their surrender in WWII. Serial killer crime novels are awesome, and I’m interested in learning more about Japan immediately post WWII. So this book had it all.
Or so it seemed. I’ve decided to put the book down after reading about 75 pages of it. The writing style is annoying. L More...

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