at the beginning of this collection, i saw the slightly less refined art style in the first story and that it was a collection of ito's earliest works. for no reason i expected them to be sort of half baked. i was so wrong; i liked the stories in this collection across the board better than both the other collections by him, i think. i really thought it was a great, creative, sort of delightful bunch of horror stories. ito's fascination with suicide comes through strong in this one, and in myriad ways. i sort of wish i'd read this one first, cos the reoccurring themes he works with seem the rawest here. my favourites in this collection were probably "where the sandman lives," "a father's love," and "unendurable labyrinth," although "bullied" was sort of brilliant too.