What Remains

A 10 year old girl is kidnapped on her way home from ballet class. Her abductor makes no ransom demand; instead he keeps her prisoner above the factory where he works. Keiko Kitamura endures degradation and squalor but never gives up hope, and a year passes before the factory owner's wife discovers and frees her. Twenty-five years later Keiko, now a famous novelist, leaves her husband without word except for a post-it note on the manuscript for her latest work, called "What Remains". Alongside the novel is letter from her abductor, Kenji, who has recently been released from prison. "What Remains" chronicles Keiko's time in captivity and subsequent release. Through the resulting criminal investigation into her abduction, Keiko's relationship with Kenji comes under close scrutiny. Though not complicit, Keiko appears reluctant to divulge elements of her incarceration. In adjusting to life threatening circumstances, Keiko's altered state of mind may have blurred the reality of events. The imagination gives rise to ones fears and also the power to endure them - but to what cost? In her latest novel translated from the Japanese, Kirino delivers a taut psychological study of a young mind subjected to extreme fear, and the price of surviving such an ordeal. "What Remains" twists the conscience, gripping as it is terrifying, to the very end.