This poetic story of Yoko Ogawa leaves room for imagination. The characters are enigmatic, as well as the place in which is held the bulk of the story, a former boarding school girl turned into a mysterious laboratory in which people come bring items for a make specimens ... The reader is immersed in a universe where the boundary between reality and fantasy remains cloudy. The atmosphere is heavy, sometimes heavy and this effect is accentuated by a rather cold writing, without affect. I think the term "intriguing" is the most suitable to describe the news. Around me, many of us have read it and we talked at length to try to unravel the mysteries.