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Originally published in 2015 and newly translated into English, Hooked muses on female friendships in a sexist society
\n\n\n\nThe Nile perch does not play well with others. During the 1950s, Western scientists introduced the species to Lake Victoria in East Africa, in an effort to boost the local fishing economy. That it did, creating a voracious export boom; but in this new environment the perch also showed its territorial, carnivorous side, wiping out many local fish. The latest of Asako Yuzuki’s novels to be translated into English follows the tug-of-war relationship between two women. Eriko is a seemingly ideal employee, and one of the few women working for the seafood division of a large Japanese trading company. She has been tasked with reintroducing Nile perch to the Japanese market; though she’s more interested in following the dainty exploits of her favourite blog, The Diary of Hallie B, The World’s Worst Wife. Shōko, aka Hallie B, is a stay-at-home wife who posts about her lazy dinners and listless days, with a growing readership who appreciate her disinclination to be like the legion of perky, perfectionist homemaker bloggers, and a publisher interested in offering her a book deal. When Eriko and Shoko meet, both feel like they’ve finally met a best friend – a delusion that quickly devolves into sniping, stalking and blackmail.
\n\n\n\nLike Yuzuki’s Butter (from 2017, released in English in 2024), Hooked revolves around a fraught female friendship. Eriko is lonely, sheltered and career focused; Shōko is lonely, from the country and unsettled by the city. Each is envious of the other’s facade of success and happiness. Alternating between chapters narrated from each perspective, the book progresses through a series of confrontational and increasingly unhinged coffee and dinner dates. The evolutionary fact of the combative Nile perch serves as the book’s central metaphor for how, or if, women can be friends in the treacherous environment of a sexist society: ‘One of them had been tossed into a lake,’ Eriko muses at one point, ‘and two creatures that were never even destined to meet ended up being thoroughly bewildered by the other.’
\n\n\n\nPublished in Japanese in 2015, under the title Nairu Pachi No Joshikai (Nile Perch Girl’s Party), the original title has a cutesy irony, disclosing the dark humour that drives the book (away from the overly thriller-esque overtones of ‘Hooked’). Written over a decade ago, at the tail end of peak blog era, the story’s issues of personas and projection still translate well enough to the current culture of social-media influencers, confessional Substacks and trad wife vloggers. Wrapped within Yuzuki’s loquacious, explanatory narration style is a pretty vicious social satire, in which, despite their fervent wishes for girly best friends, the women in Hooked share only through clashing and debasing each other, with an eat or be eaten attitude. Eriko envisions herself at one point as a giant perch, content in having consumed all other inhabitants of the lake: ‘one mammoth fish. And yet, the Nile perch wasn’t lonely. It wasn’t lonely because it contained inside that enormous body the souls of the hundreds of thousands of creatures it had eaten.’ The men in the book are casually dismissive, doting only when their female counterparts are vulnerable; while the older generation, their parents, are passive, resentful presences. The fish’s predicament sets up the book as acting out a form of social Darwinism, where those who can be cruel enough and marry a feckless man can emerge victorious, and offering a wry critique of society in which such gladiatorial squabbling feels like the only option available to women.
\n\n\n\nFor all its pointed depravity, the characters’ unwitting sadism also gets enacted on the reader, caught in the book’s repetitive, slow swirling eddy. It’s deliberately exasperating reading, waiting to see if they might find some way to evade the misguided competition in which they’re trapped. Ultimately, the ecosystem Yuzuki constructs is a little too big for such small fish: her characters don’t feel engaging enough to keep you, well, hooked.
\n\n\n\nHooked by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton. 4th Estate, £14.99 (softcover)
\n\n\n\nFrom the Spring 2026 issue of ArtReview Asia – get your copy.
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