Keigo Higashino’s The Secret

The Secret is a beautiful, moving novel. At first the soul transfer that occurs after the car accident seemed unrealistic (and uncomfortable), and then I slowly understood the beauty of the author’s design in this way, and it’s precisely this kind of scenario that won’t occur in reality that makes you both hunted and awestruck, and lets us see the sincere feelings of a middle-aged man for his wife and daughter.

The best thing about this novel is the psychological descriptions of the characters, and while reading it it felt a bit like thered fingerand theStreets of Dawn“, a seemingly simple story with waves of psychological activity behind it.

For a while I thought it was a deduction novel because the main character kept on ‘investigating’ the cause of the driver’s fatigue and because the name of the novel was called ‘The Secret’, but in my heart, I kept on expecting that there would not be any secret or reversal of the truth, or any other paranormal events. Until the end, the novel has no deductive plot, and the cause of the accident is a very ordinary family life.

When reading it, I always struggle with how the hero chooses between his wife and his daughter, how he should end up as his daughter’s wife in the future, and what to do with both of their lives. The result given by the author makes sense and is the most reasonable solution, after all, the male lead is dozens of years older than his daughter and can’t be with her all the time, she should have her own life. But this completely sacrifices the hero and buries the understanding, knowledgeable and caring wife. At the part where the wife is leaving for good, I was so moved I wanted to cry, I didn’t want her to leave, I didn’t want the main character to die alone, but if she didn’t leave, her daughter would never grow up, someone had to leave.