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Nanase has always been able to hear people's thoughts, and has learnt how to keep it a secret. Because of her telepathy, she takes jobs as a house maid, the kind of work that she can easily leave if she needs to, and not be bombarded with the thoughts of the same people every day as she would in an office.

But the people she works for are their own trial for Nanase. Lecherous, or vain, or stupid, or selfish - they all have their flaws, and Nanase is a witness to their family dramas, their squabbles, their emotional blackmailing and their vindictiveness. When she tries to subtly improve things using her ability, it doesn't always work out the way she intended.

This is a dark, twisted story - or rather, the characters are dark and twisted, since we get that look into their psyches. They are perfectly ordinary Japanese people, but in their hearts and minds their harbour such relentless anger, greed and hatred as to make you wonder at humanity. The scary thing is, it's all plausible. It certainly doesn't paint a pretty portrait of Japanese society (even if it was written in the early 70s), but that doesn't make it any less believable. On the one hand, you've got that amazing, vivid and somewhat crazy imagination that I feel only the Japanese can possibly possess (perhaps due to the repressive, restrained society and culture in other respects), and on the other because I have lived there and known hundreds of Japanese people through the work I did, I think I may even have met some Japanese who could be like these characters in some way or other.

It's a short book, and a quick read, and my first time reading Tsutsui - I've since got a copy of Paprika since I enjoyed this one so much. And that's the thing: it's no pleasant story, made up of unpleasant vignettes and ends somewhat horribly, but rather like a train derailing, or a multi-car pile-up, or a plane crash: you can't look away. Within disaster and destruction seem to fall humans stripped bare, to be made or broken. It's grotesque, but it's human, and stories like this one make you feel like you're closer than ever to understanding humanity.