“Men putting on weight is different from women putting on weight.” So says the boyfriend of Rika Machida, a Tokyo-based journalist on the verge of “becoming the first woman to make the editorial desk” at her newspaper, the Shūmei Weekly, and the protagonist of this delicious offering – a bestseller in Japan – from Asako Yuzuki. In taking a cleaver to such comments, Yuzuki exposes the misogynist gristle, resulting in an incisive, at times thrilling novel about fatphobia, the pleasures of consumption and the often murky relationship between food and trauma.
Based on the real-life case of the “Konkatsu Killer”, in which a con woman and talented home cook called Kanae Kijima was convicted of poisoning three of her male lovers, Butter uses its sordid source material to interrogate the impossible beauty standards to which Japanese women are held.
