Snakes and Earrings KINDLE MOBI by Hitomi Kanehara

Winner of both the 2003 Subaru Literary Prize (Shueisha) for her novel Hebi ni Piasu (Snakes and Earrings), author Hitomi Kanehara also the same year won the Akutagawa Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Japan, making her one of the youngest people ever to receive this honor. (Kanehara wrote the novel at age 21). It is considered a modern "cult classic", and is narrated by the main protagonist Lui -- "Lui for Louis Vuitton" she claims, though the truth is more prosaic -- who is not yet twenty and living on her own in Tokyo.
Snakes and Earrings is a short novella, and an odd mix of the sedate and simple and the brutal. Lui is considered a 'Barbie-girl', but it's a label she rejects, and when she meets forked-tongued and tattooed Ama (who literally has a tongue with its tip split) she knows that this is the path she wants to go down.
It's an odd life Kanehara describes, identity found in appearances (which change quite a bit in the novel) and labels ('Barbie-girl', punk, etc.) and not more conventional forms. Lui lives with Ama for months and has what she describes as an intimate and close relationship with him, yet never even learns his full name or where he works. Lui's tongue-splitting endeavour -- a protracted affair -- is one ambition (one that would mark her in a way that made it impossible to, for example, be a companion-girl again), but it's a superficial change. Contemporary life doesn't appear to be quite as easy to escape.
Snakes and Earrings is a short novella, and an odd mix of the sedate and simple and the brutal. Lui is a remarkably self-absorbed character, taking the world entirely on her own terms, showing almost no curiosity about anything. Her desire to live a life counter to society's expectations seem a sad and incomplete effort, despite her marginalized social circle and embrace of an alternative lifestyle. Lui's choices, though against the grain, are in order to fit in at least somewhere, yet ultimately show no more conviction than any other path she might have chosen. She remains a cipher even at the end.