"Listening to the audiobook version of "Butter" on the way home from Japan kept Japan alive with me as I flew further away from it. Immediately, I felt I was experiencing real Tokyo life, on the inside: inside this professional journalist, Rika's relationships; with her mother, best friend, occasional boyfriend, work colleagues, professional network and interviewees; inside the interiors of the small apartments I walked past and rode past on the train, each day in Tokyo; the interiors of the offices high above me, and restaurants similar to places where I had eaten. They were opened up to me.

Rika's relationship with Manako, the accused serial killer, throws all her other relationships into relief - causing her to question and re-evaluate her own professional and personal life. It also throws into relief the patriarchal nature of Japanese society and the woman's role within family life and work. Rich, sensual, calorie-laden food becomes the catalyst which draws Rika into a claustrophobic relationship with Manako. Rika almost loses her own identity as she becomes intoxicated by Manako's influence. Tokyo is the unsettling setting at the heart of the novel but the trips into the countryside, are both realistically and figuratively, part of a reaching back in time to younger days, to help make sense of where we are now.

"Butter" was not always comfortable to read. There were moments of potentially awful, traumatic danger, thankfully deflated. I enjoyed the quirkyness of the novel; from descriptions of mundane home routines; to heightened sensual experiences of cooking and eating; to existential meanderings on the nature of Japanese society, and one's own existence. It took imagination to empathise with the characters, at times, but it was worth persevering to feel a deepening of empathy for them. Slowly, I began to just feel the humanity within these young people, trying to find their place and their way in the world like so many other young adults today."