Following the enormous success of Butter’s English translation in 2024, it seemed inevitable that another of Asako Yuzuki’s novels would surface in the UK. Nairu pachi no joshikai (The Nile Perch Women’s Club), published in 2014, has now become Hooked. Billed as a literary thriller about female friendship, loneliness and obsession, it is a deeply strange, unsettling read.

The novel follows Eriko, a high-flying project manager, and Shoko, a slacker housewife blogger, who both struggle with life – or, rather, with the behaviour expected of Japanese women. Both have achieved a level of acceptance socially (Eriko in her career, Shoko in her relationship), but they find the pursuit of ‘gal pals’ a major stumbling block in their quest for the appearance of normality.

The story centres around the Japanese fish import markets, with the focus on Eriko and her task of re-establishing the Nile perch on the country’s menu. But the fish has a controversial history. Commercial breeding in Lake Victoria has forced it into the role of an invasive species, destroying much of the biomatter and leaving the lake so barren that even its own existence is threatened. The concept is rich in allegory when it comes to the perils of modern womanhood. Nile perch, like women, have been placed in unnatural conditions, leaving them no other choice but to become ‘ferocious’ – even if leads to their undoing.

Social media, too, is skewered by Yuzuki, as the ‘perfect’ exteriors presented by housewife influencers are contrasted with altogether darker female experiences. The levels of perfection required are at odds with humanity, and especially the collaborative nature of friendship. Perfection can only be achieved alone; friendships entail   compromises and messiness. The quandary is that having friends is another inextricable aspect of achieving female perfection: ‘Women who weren’t relatable made people feel lonely.’

Friendship is painted as essentially inefficient (‘What was the point of scrabbling around in the gravel for the odd shining fragment?’), and trying to pursue it puts Eriko in a ‘transplanted’ environment, just like the Nile perch. She sees herself and Shoko as having fallen through the ‘intricate net of rules ensnaring Japanese women’ and having to ‘take each other’s hands here in this dark, quiet haven at the bottom of the lake’.

Female friends, then, are another invasive species. Eriko, Shoko and women more generally are unsuited to their artificially enforced environments. To use a metaphor far too crude for Yuzuki’s quiet, thoughtful, creepy prose, they are fish out of water.