TChris - Published on Amazon.com Format: Paperback | Amazon Verified Purchase Noriko Hashimoto's reservations about marrying Kazuhito and joining the Shito household -- complete with siblings, parents, grandparents, and his great-grandmother -- are quickly dispelled by the sunny, welcoming personalities the family members display. To an unnatural degree, the family members embrace Noriko, viewing her as a "treasure" who will, in some unspoken way, be the family's salvation. Noriko is puzzled but flattered; she soon joins in the family's routines. All seems well until an old ice vendor tries to warn Noriko about the family, only to be interrupted by Noriko's mother-in-law before he can voice his concerns. When the ice vendor and his family die in an explosion, Noriko begins to suspect that the Shito family is not as perfect as it seems. A friend in whom she confides tells her: "You haven't married into money, you've married into a swamp of madness." But what sort of madness underlies the apparent perfection of this extended family? Are they criminals? Are they deviants, living apart from the social norms that Noriko has always accepted? Noriko feels alienated, in part because she doesn't share the family's unnatural closeness (to quote an ancient issue of Mad magazine, "the family that bathes together, stays together," an apt description of the Shitos). Noriko observes an apparent sexual flirtation between siblings that concerns her, even as the family members shrug off her objections to their lifestyle. From the beginning, Noriko is subjected to a form