I do my laundry at the neighboring apartment complex, and someone had left a stack books next to the washers with a sign reading "Free." I picked up this book as I thought it might be some sort of murder mystery.

Instead it was a "Catcher in the Rye" meets "Lolita" psychological study of four girls attending an elite academy in Tokyo. I'd hate to think that even a smidgen of this reflects the actual experience of school in Japan.

Imagine a Japanese teenage girl version of Holden Caulfield with a younger sister who is a Lolita with a Barbie doll body. Throw in two more girls with their own neuroses, then construct the narrative out of personal testimony, letters, a court transcripts and two separate journals, and you get a tale of depravity, delusion and self-destruction. Don't forget, none of the narrators are reliable, so you're never quite sure what the actual chain of events is.

So you can add Akira Kurasawa's film "Rashoman" as the third parent of this depressing and weirdly intriguing read.