Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder

by Asako Yuzuki

Rika had never considered that kind of life for herself, but she could see the power such women bestowed upon their families. Every night, those women would clean out the toxins that had built up in their partners’ bodies and souls over the course of the day – toxins that, if left untouched for too long, would eat a person away.

Their backgrounds may have been worlds apart, but Reiko and Rika shared the experience of holding, throughout their girlhoods, a sense of unease towards the kind of family that the rest of the world idealised.

In principle, all women should give themselves permission to demand good treatment, but the world made doing so profoundly difficult.

‘I learned from my late father that women should show generosity towards everyone. But there are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.’

Instilling desire in someone was a lot of fun, regardless of whether that person was male or female.

‘There is nothing in this world so pathetic, so moronic, so meaningless as dieting.’

She was tired of living her life thinking constantly about how she appeared to others, checking her answers against everyone else’s.