A wonderful collection of stories making up a short novel starring a maid who can read minds. The book is broken up into eight stories, each one a story of a different family the maid works for. The book blends elements of psychology and the paranormal in a variety of wonderfully creepy and entertaining vignettes building to a startling and abrupt ending. That is the best I can do as an explanation. The more I try to describe it the worse this gets so I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead. If you see it. Buy it. It is good and hard to find at the moment (It might get republished some day, Tsutsui is starting to gain some momentum in the U.S.) If you like Asian magical realism fantasy stuff that is. My vacation read while I am in Japan. Yasutaka Tsutsui wrote a collection of short stories that reminded me of my beloved Boris Vian. If one had to put him into a category, I guess it would be science fiction. But he is also a very playful sort of writer. And this is where the Vian connection kicks in."The Maid" is by no means a major piece of work. Its a collection of stories about a Maid who can read minds. So each episode deals with her moving into a family or household and finding out their deepest secrets and desires. There is no additional information regarding these stories, but I suspect that Tsutsui wrote them for either a magazine or newspaper. It has that feel of pure pulp writing. Nevertheless I think he's an important writer to check out. And I do have a stack of his books (not read yet) in my 'to be read' section of the house.
Excellent book! A real page-turner & very unique! Highly recommend
—tammie
a mind-reading maid finds out that hell is other people's psyche.
—manavbhalla1981
An interesting and compelling read.
—mbbombshell
