Ring by Koji Suzuki

(304 pages)



Stunning, cutting-edge thriller with a chilling supernatural twist from Japan's stylish new literary star. Asakawa is a hardworking journalist who has climbed his way up from local-news beat reporter to writer for his newspaper's weekly magazine. A chronic workaholic, he doesn't take much notice when his seventeen-year-old niece dies suddenly -- until a chance conversation reveals that another healthy teenager died at exactly the same time, in chillingly similar circumstances. Sensing a story, Asakawa begins to investigate, and soon discovers that this strange simultaneous sudden-death syndrome also affected another two teenagers. Exactly one week before their mysterious deaths the four teenagers all spent the night at a leisure resort in the same log cabin. When Asakawa visits the resort, the mystery only deepens. A comment made in the guest book by one of the teenagers leads him to a particular videotape. When he watches it, instead of a movie he finds an odd collection of disparate images with a portentous message at the end: Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now. Asakawa finds himself in a race against time

Having seen both the original Japanese film 'Ringu' and the Americanised version 'Ring' and loving both, i felt it necessary to read the book. Luckily I wasn't disappointed!There are some big differences between the films and the books, the main one being that the main character (Asakawa) is male not female, there is also some detailed description as to how the video could've come into being and that all makes sense (unlike parts of the American film), BUT I think that had I not seen the Japanese film first, I may not have been sure where it was going. I am definitely glad that I hve read it, and having discovered that there are another two books 'Loop' and 'Spiral', I must say that I am itching to read them!I would recommend this to everyone, but must suggest that you watch 'Ringu' first (it is scary - more so than the book)