Query SORROW, REVENGE, DEATH

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Tokyo3
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Query SORROW, REVENGE, DEATH

Post by Tokyo3 » March 7th, 2019, 5:51 pm

Dear Agent,

Sixteen-year-old Rina Mitani becomes emotionally invisible after she is raped. Mentally she is collapsing until she enrolls in kendo lessons, a Japanese martial art. By following kendo’s main tenet, discipline of the human character, she finds inner strength. However, she can never forget she was raped.

Depressed and wanting to erase her past, Rina attacks her overprotective mom with her bamboo sword and runs away to Tokyo with only her kendo gear. Rina continues her training, but on the way to her dojo, she is repeatedly groped by a middle-aged businessman during rush hour on the train. Disgusted with his wandering hands, she attacks him with a kitchen knife, which is concealed under her sleeve and gets away with it.

After attacking her molester, Rina realizes she needs be assertive. A trait she discovers while watching a talk show about hostess clubs and female entertainers who manipulate male clients for money. She takes a job at a hostess club and learns how to be aggressive. She also befriends a yakuza boss, eventually killing him, stealing 1,000,000 yen and fleeing to Osaka.

In Osaka, Rina becomes a kendo instructor and wife, but she suffers a miscarriage, which devastates her. Bitter with her life, she returns to her hometown and confronts her past.

SORROW, REVENGE, DEATH is an 86,000 word literary novel.

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nlshippen
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Joined: October 26th, 2019, 5:53 pm
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Re: Query SORROW, REVENGE, DEATH

Post by nlshippen » October 28th, 2019, 4:27 pm

The opening paragraph is a great catalyst for Rina's journey. Starting with the rape that she apparently keeps a secret and tries to come to terms with it on her own. I would like to know why she does not report this through official channels and whether she tells her mum. I suspect she has not, as there is no indication of it in this query.

In paragraph two, it seems like she is taking her frustrations out on her mum. I would like to know why she attacks her mum with a bamboo sword, as this makes her seem unsympathetic. Did she tell her mum about the rape? Did her mum not believe her, or tell her she bought it on herself? Why is mum over protective?

She attacks her molester in paragraph three and then says she "needs to be assertive". She's just attacked a guy with a knife - she sounds pretty assertive to me.

It seems like she wants to take revenge on the whole male sex by becoming an evil hostess who eventually kills a yakuza boss. Fair enough. This reminds me of Charles Dicken's Stella from Great Expectations.

Finally, she decides to settle down and have a family. Has she overcome her hatred of men? Another crisis comes along in the forum of a miscarriage which gives her pause for reflection. Finally, she has to return to the start where the trouble started, and face the demons that started her on this journey.

The story has come full circle, which I find a very satisfying way to conclude a novel.

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