Okiku died 300 hundred years ago and roams the earth killing men who murder children. She travels all over the world, largely unnoticed, ignoring everyone except her targets until she sees a boy with moving tattoos. His name is Tark and she finds herself drawn to him. For the first time in centuries, she becomes embroiled in his life and cares about protecting him from another spirit who follows him wherever her goes.
The Girl in the Well takes a trope, changes the perspective, and makes it feel fresh and new. Okiku, a vengeful spirit, tells this story directly from her own point of view. She travels as she likes around the earth, not always truly conscious, and kills murderous men. The spirits of those he has killed are tethered to him and unable to escape for the duration of his life. It's a truly chilling prospect for those poor spirits to not only die horribly, but to be forced to witness others dying the same way and following around their own killer for decades. When Okiku kills the men, the spirits are freed while she is still stuck on earth, looking for more spirits to free. Her descriptions feel a bit detached because she's lost much of herself in death and views most things with little emotion. My favorite part of her narration is the dramatic page breaks that both slow the tempo of reading and accompany a rare glimpse of intense emotion within her (usually followed by her attacking or scaring someone).
The legend of Okiku, or at least her image, is familiar because of Japanese films and American remakes like The Grudge and The Ring. She has long black hair, usually obscuring her face, and wears a white dress. In life, she was a servant who tried to serve her king well by warning him of treachery by a trusted advisor. The traitor broke one precious plate in a set of ten and in turn accuses Okiku of breaking it. The king believed him and allowed her to be tortured and killed, thrown down a well to drown. There are a few variations on this story, but she always ends up in the well in the end. Because of her background, she targets murderous men and continually counts everything: people, cars, dolls, ceiling tiles, anything in any given place. If she ever counts only nine, she has a violent outburst to destroy one of the objects to change the offending number. This trauma from her past hundreds of years ago persists to this day.
Even Okiku is surprised when she's drawn to Tark and the ghost woman in black tethered to him. She forms a sort of friendship with him as she becomes entrenched in his life. Callie, his older cousin, doesn't quite warm up to her and set to remind the audience that Okiku is still dangerous, not quite human. The plot involving Tark takes a lot of surprising turns, subverting the tropes of Okiku type stories. My favorite development was looking into his mother's background as a shaman. She gave up a life of protecting people and capturing evil spirits to be with Tark's father. She came from a powerful collective of women that served their community for the greater good that Tark later returns to for help with the spirit bound to him. The conflict between Okiku and the masked woman is pretty epic and leads to inner growth in Okiku.
The Girl from the Well definitely surprised me with its change in perspective and complex view of Okiku. On one hand, she's an avenging death angel who kills murderers without remorse and on the other, she's rediscovering her humanity and connecting with living humans. Her point of view is refreshing because this figure seems to always be painted as a malevolent presence when she was wronged in life and didn't start out that way. Her journey and narrative in the novel are fascinating and it took me almost no time at all to read. There is a sequel called The Suffering that I immediately bought and I can't wait to get to.
My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins
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