The Correspondent and Butter

The Red Fern Book Review is back!

We begin with a look at the Japanese cult favourite Butter by Asako Yuzuki. It is a sharp, unsettling novel that explores appetite, obsession, and the cultural weight of food and femininity.

We then turn to my personal favourite book of 2025, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans—a quietly powerful and deeply moving epistolary novel about connection, memory, and the surprising intimacy of written words.

Also featured in this episode:

• The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang
• The House of Belonging by David Whyte

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Transcript

Amy Tyler: 0:00

Above the mountains, the geese turn into the light again, painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart, sometimes with the bones of the Black Sticks left when the fire has gone out, someone has written something new in the ashes of your life, you are not leaving, even as the light fades quickly. Now in my eyes, you are always arriving. Amy, Amy, hello. Welcome back to the Red Fern book review. I am your host, Amy Tyler, and today I'm going to talk about two books that I've been reading with my book club that I thought you'd be interested in one is a departure, and it took me out of my comfort zone, and I liked it very much. And the other one is a cozy read that I also was surprised how much I liked it. And those two books are butter by Asako Yuzuki and the correspondent by Virginia Evans and but before I get to the books, I wanted to talk to you about where I've been. And thank you. Some of you have been asking where I've been and when I'll be coming back, and I've been on a little bit of a hiatus. I have been actually editing books. So it's always been a dream of mine to edit books, and some things came together in the past year, where I have had an opportunity to work with self published authors through a company called the self publishing agency here in Vancouver, and I'm specifically have been editing memoirs. So I've edited four memoirs on a variety of different topics. Interestingly, they all kind of had a bit of a spiritual bent. But I've worked with government officials. I've worked with a therapist, an educator, someone on a very important spiritual quest. So I think in the future, you might be hearing from some of those authors. I think I'm going to start looking a little bit more at memoir and what it's like to edit and also write these books. So stay tuned for that. And then the second thing that's gone on. It's less of a happy thing, but my mom passed away a few months ago. So she passed away in January, and I've been grieving and organizing myself. And today, actually, as a matter of fact, my mom, I'm getting my mom lived in California, and I'm getting some of her things moved here. So I've been on the phone with that, with the movers regarding that. But the interestingly, one of the reasons I'm going to talk about the correspondent is there's a special connection I have with that book and my mother. So I'm going to share about that. And I thought I'd also conclude today and talk to you about a book event that I recently went to through the Vancouver Public Library, and also read from one of my favorite poets, David White, not really a poetry reader, but sometimes I am. And this guy, I've talked I know I've talked about him before on the podcast, but he is pretty special. And this is also, I actually read his poetry at my mom's service. So I'm going to read an excerpt from his book, The House of belonging. But let's get right into it. Let's start talking about the books. So I'm going to start with the book that made me a little bit uncomfortable, and was a little bit is, I think, quite unique. I haven't read anything like it, so that book is called butter by Asako Yuzuki. Now this book was, or is, kind of a cult, modern cult classic in Japan, and came out around 2017 and just a couple years ago, it was translated into English. And what it's about, it is about a female gourmet cook turned serial killer, and it's novel, and what happens is the novel story. Arts by this woman. Her name is manako Kaji, and she goes in the book by her last name, Kaji, and she's sitting in the Tokyo detention house, and she's been convicted of serial murders of lonely businessmen. And it's she's been convicted. But the thing is, it's all circumstantial. She's never been seen, you know, at the crime scene, but she was sort of the last known to be near them, and then they all died, like a year, a day or two later, and they all appeared to be suicide, and we don't really know how or why, and that's kind of coming out when you start the book, but she ends up getting convicted. But she's sitting and she's she, she hasn't really talked to press. She won't talk to people, and there's a very curious journalist, if that's an oxymoron. Her name is Rika, and she wants to get an interview with her. And so what she figures she's going to do. So I should add that kiji writes sort of a jailhouse blog on cooking and life, and so what Rika does is she writes to her and asks her about what goes into her beef stew, or asks her question about her beef stew, and that piques kiji's interest, and she agrees to meet with her. So then they meet, and the book is a bit of a cat and mouse game. It reminds me very much of the silence of the lambs in that the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, how they have this sort of cat and mouse. And the book is, in the end, I think very much about the journalist and not the killer, and the transformation that she goes under by coming in contact with this woman who gets her to think different ways and try different things. So what ends up happening is they come together, and she starts to tell the journalist, Rika, well, I'll talk to you, but I need you to go to a specific restaurant and have a specific food and come back and tell me about it, because she wants to live vicariously through this journalist, because she can't have these experiences anymore. So she'll send her to the best ramen shop in town and tell her very specifically what to order and all the specific toppings, and then wants her to come up, come back, and then she also has her cook specific things. And one of the things she gets her to cook, which totally does not appeal to me at all, but I think I might have to try it. She gets her to get very special butter they can't get at a regular store, you know, like farm fresh butter from a specific place. Mix it with soy sauce and noodles, and that just does not sound good. But anyway, and it is like one of the best things that Rika has ever had, and through this process, she starts to gain weight and but she's feeling kind of pleasure from it, because she feels compelled to stay thin and adhere to conventional beauty standards. But in the name of working with this murderer, she feels that she has the right, for the first time, to really sort of explore food, indulge her senses, and so that's kind of interesting side story. But what what's really fascinating about this book is it's actually based on a true story, and there was a woman in around late like 2007 2009 known as the kankatsu killer, which means marriage hunting. Concatsu means marriage. And so she was called the marriage hunting killer, and she was convicted of the very same thing, taking lonely businessmen, feeding them beautiful meals and and then they mysteriously would die. And she was also convicted, and I believe she currently sits on death row for what happened. But the bigger thing about her is she was not thin or conventionally beautiful at all, and so people were fascinated by how she was able to do the things she did and seduce them in when she herself did not adhere to traditional beauty standards. So what this book is at the core, is a social commentary on Japan, on male female relationships, on misogyny and the woman, the killer, and also the journalists. I think the killer has a lot of hatred towards men, and Rika has is struggling figuring out how to be with her boyfriend, whether to get married or not, and kind of dealing with contemporary male female relations. I thought it was really fascinating. The book is heavy on dialog, not. Tons of description. That's a mystery. Halfway through the book, there's a huge like, there's a twist which keeps it kind of keeps it going. The murderer sends her on some errands. She sends her to an area called the Snowy Mountains, which reminds me of sort of Narnia and actual area of Japan. She goes to the north, and that is where this woman is from. And so she goes to her hometown. She uncovers some secrets there. She travels on bullet trains. I just thought there was a wonderful sense of place in this book. So if you're looking for something different and also something educational. I recommend it, but I did want to also read a little passage from the book. I've got to find it I've dog eared. So this is a part where Rika is evaluating what cooking actually means after spending time with Kate Ki and also thinking about it in her own life, because she is through instruction from Kaji, goes home and cooks her boyfriend a meal, and he interprets it as they're going to be married, and she doesn't see it that way. So I'm going to read these two passages. Eating was ultimately an individual and egoistic compulsion. Rica was starting to realize a gourmand was ultimately a seeker of the truth. You could wrap up their mission in all kinds of fancy language, but they were simply confronting their desires day in and day out. As you learned to cook, you became increasingly able to shut out the outside world and create a fortress within your own spirit. You hunted down your prey, using fire and blades to fashion them into the form you desired. Reading could Jesus blog posts she had been struck by her intense stoicism. It took a deathly earnestness to remain faithful to her desires at all times. That was something that her victims failed to notice. Rika thought taking her cooking as an expression of her affection towards them, they'd eaten it happily, wasn't that the same the truth for Mikado, she'd made him a single bowl of pasta, and he'd mistakenly assumed she was forcing her affection on him, hinting she wanted to get married and rejecting her, and rejected her as a result, but that was pasta rica had made for her own sake, and that's why it tasted so good. Okay, with that, we're going to move over to the second book. So the second book is a crowd pleaser, and I think a lot of you will have heard about the book, and I've talked about this before. Again, the book is the correspondent by Virginia Evans. I often, I think maybe you do too, if you're a big reader. I sometimes don't jump at sort of the IT book or the popular book, because I think I don't know, I just think it won't be as interesting to me and everyone else is reading it, but inevitably, I just take a bit of time, and then I pick it up and I love it, and that's exactly what happened here. This book was on my sort of to read list. Our book club decided to read it, and I loved it. And what it's about, it's about a woman named Sybil and Ben Antwerp. And it's an epistolary Amy saying that right, correctly. I hope I am epistolary novel. It's a novel told through letters, which is always very clever. That's a bit of an old fashioned concept, but she not. Everything is straightforward. Everything is revealed in time over letters. But what we learn is, in the beginning, Sybil lives in Annapolis, Maryland. She's in her early 70s. She's alone, she's divorced. Her husband lives in Europe. He's European. He has. She has a son and a daughter, and she neither of them live nearby, and she doesn't get along with her daughter, Fiona. She has a couple of friends, but not really. She has. She occupies her day. She gets up in the morning. She has a beautiful garden. She has she likes birds. In fact, on the cover there are two birds, and they're facing each other. And I think of that as sort of, they're not carrier pigeons. But thinking of think of it as sort of carrier pigeon, pigeons writing or carrying messages back and forth. And so she gets into a car accident, and she freaks out because she's worried her kids are going to take away her freedom, maybe make her go into some type of home or not let. Independently. So that's kind of got, it's kind of broken something open for her. So she's starting to get anxious, but back to her daily routine. So she has this garden. There are birds all around. She's a loner, and she writes letters to everybody. She writes letters to famous authors like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry and Anne Patchett. She writes letters to her friends, she writes letters to her children. She writes a letter that she doesn't send, and as the novel carries along, you find out her big secret, and there's something that she's grappling with, and it comes to light through letters. But it is, first of all, it's hilarious. She is over the top and super uptight and very funny through her letters, I guess, intention, unintentionally. So it is cozy, heart warming. It is something I think I'll read again and again. It is very similar to a man called Oh. So if that was not for you and you found found it too kind of saccharine, then don't read this book. I didn't find this book saccharine, but it is definitely on the of the cozy variety. And there's another book that it reminds me of, the brilliant life of Eudora honey, set by Annie Lyons, very similar to this. I also love that book. It's set in England, and I've talked about it on the podcast before, and it's a woman who is older, and she's a loner, and she finds out she's going to die and she's ill, and she's got this annoying neighbor who's a little girl who's always knocking on her door. And of course, they strike up a beautiful friendship, and the woman evolves as a result. But anyway, I just I thought this book was lovely. And then what happened, though it was, I had a bit of, I don't even know what to say, type of experience. I was headed down to my mom's service in February, and this was on my list for book club. I hadn't gotten to it because I was, I was struggling to read at that time, and I just tucked it into my bag because I knew it was an easy read. So I put it in my bag, I got on the plane, and I read the first page, and I thought, Oh, my God, this is my mother, and my mother was formal. My mother loved to write letters. She had this beautiful backward left, left slanted handwriting, leftward, slanted handwriting. I knew her so well, yet some ways, didn't know her at all. We had some ups and downs. We had an amazing last couple of years. My dad passed away, I guess, a couple years before, and we got quite a bit closer, but she just reminded me so much of this woman, and I felt this was my mother speaking to me. My mom loved birds. It was like her favorite I think she wanted to be a bird and the birds on the cover, and she loved flowers. So I did want to finish talking about this book by reading a passage. So what from it and what had happened. I love this book so much. I read it in 24 hours, the front I got the second I got on the plane, and I stayed up all night and read it, and I ended up reading from it at my mom's service. And I also read another poem, which I'm going to read to you at the end as well, but that this kind of this happened on the fly, and this was not my intent, but I want to read a passage at the end, and I'm careful I'm not there's not doing any spoilers, so you can listen, but it kind of sums up the book, and it also sums up my mom. So here it is. She's writing to her daughter Fiona, and telling her why things are sometimes challenging between them. And she says, I began writing letters because my birth mother, as a child, I thought of her as my real mother had apparently written letters. I clung to this, and did actually find through correspondence, inexplicable relief. I could write to anyone. I could take the time to think through what I wanted to say, practice rewrite and get it exactly how I wanted. It was so much easier for me to write than it was to have a conversation, even I was insecure, painfully so I felt so strange on the phone the other night, you mentioned this that you wondered if maybe I could only have meaningful relationships through letters, and I have been thinking about that when I was young, by writing letters, I found a framework that made living easier, and that has never changed. However, I do wonder if by conducting the most intimate relationships of my life and correspondence I have kept since I was a child a dis. Between myself and others. I think it's true, the letters have insulated me. Have been a force field, just as practicing law insulated me from dealing with humanity directly, and I wouldn't change any of it. But I find myself at this old age wanting closeness. I want closeness something I have not had, other than when I Met Your Dad, when I look back at my life as a mother, I have a pervasive sense of failure and let and yet look at you, your life is full and good, and so is your brother's. Fiona, I am sorry I have kept you at an arm's length, teaching you not to need me. I am sorry I was bitter that you visited Rosalie and punished you for it. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry I didn't do better. I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember inside, I am also only just a girl. Wow. So anyway, if you haven't read that book, I hope you do and let me know what you think I'd love to know. Okay, so we're just going to conclude with two other things I wanted to briefly talk about. One I popped by a book talk. Oh, I did want to let you know I'm going to see David Sedaris tonight. Yay. I'm so excited. He has a book, a new book, out. But every time I've seen him, like two other times, and he is so funny. He's one of my favorite people. Even though he's not my friend, I feel like he is. But this book is called the Phoenix crown, and I went recently to a talk to hear from the two authors that wrote it. It was written by Kate Quinn along with Jamie Chang. Now, Kate Quinn, you're going to know who she is. She wrote the rose code and the Alice network, and she is American, but Jamie Chang is from British Columbia, and I knew her, but I haven't read any of her books, and they both specialize in historical fiction, so they've come together and written a book about two opera singers at the turn of the 20th century in San Francisco. So I will tell you I have not read the book I'm holding in my hand. Hand, it's got a beautiful cover with a woman with kind of a turn of the century cap on and Art Deco style jewelry and a beaded navy dress. So it looks very romantic. But what I wanted to talk about was just they got along like gangbusters. And it's so fun, because often it's a bit of an oxymoron when you say, you know, author is not often charismatic, or they can't, they're not always, and they were both incredibly charismatic and just so supportive of each other. And it was Kate Quinn's idea. They had met at a publishing conference a couple of years ago, and they decided to come together. They both respected each other's work. They'd been on panels together, and they decided to write this book together. They traveled together to do research, but I thought was what was fascinating is the way they did it was it's told from two characters, and it alternates each character's point of view. So that's how they were able to do it, because each one could have a different kind of voice. So I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be reading that soon. And I just thought, if you're if you're into historical fiction and you like Kate Quinn, check it out. So okay, I wanted to conclude with a very brief reading by David White, who is my favorite poet, but that's not saying a lot, because I'm not really that into poetry, but I am definitely into this guy. So a couple years ago, someone gave me an amazing book of poetry called the House of belonging. David is Irish, and he is permanently living in the Pacific Northwest. He lives in Washington State. He is actually very well known in the genre. He writes a lot about grief, a lot about love, a lot about longing, and a lot about nature. So all of his poems are a lot of his poems this, this collection, anyway, is heavy on that. And initially I wasn't planning to talk about the correspondent at my mom's service. I was planning to read from this. So I read a poem at my mom's service. And I'm not going to read it all here, because it's long, but it's from this collection, the house of belonging. It's called what I must tell myself, and it is about someone almost taking the form of. A bird and flying home. And it's about the person's free. They're in nature, they're flying high, they're scared, but they're deciding not to be scared, and they're doing it anyway. They don't have a choice, and life is over, and it talks about the transformation, how everyone wants to go home, and everything must transform, and it's about the life that's left behind, and what you make of that and those that are left behind. But I did want to conclude by reading a shorter poem. It's a little bit similar, but it'll give you a little feeling. Oh, but before I end with this, I do want to say another thing he does? David White does these fun little trips where you can go travel with him and walk in Europe, and he has retreats. He had a recent retreat in California. But he also does this thing that's really cool. It's called three Sundays, and he does different topics, and it's what it says you meet for an hour over three consecutive Sundays, and you don't have to do any prep work. He just sits there and talks to you, reads from his readings, his poetry, he muses about thoughts he has. I subscribed to him on sub stack, and he everything has a theme. So I did the one on love, and it was $75 and I just loved it. It was just educational fun and fun to see him and feel a connection. So I'm going to conclude this podcast with one of his poems called the journey, the journey above the mountains, the geese turn into the light, again, painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart, sometimes with the bones of the Black Sticks left when the fire has gone out, someone has written something new in the ashes of your life, you are not leaving, even as the light fades quickly. Now in my eyes, you are always arriving. And with that, I want to conclude the latest episode of The Red firm book review. And thank you so much for listening, and I will be back soon. And stay tuned and let me know. I'd love to know if you pick up butter, or if you've read the correspondent, what you think so. Send me a voice memo. Off the go on the voice on the show notes, and find me there. Or you can find me on Instagram at Red Fern book Review. Take care and talk with You soon. You

Unknown: 28:22

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