Reel Bay

October 5, 2020
In this disappointing debut, Larson charts her fascination with Takako Konishi, a young Japanese woman who died in Minnesota while allegedly searching for the money buried in the snow near the end of the movie Fargo. Regarding the 2001 case as the tragedy “of a woman... who wagered what little she had to make this trip out to the middle of nowhere,” Larson merges Takako’s story with her own attempts to learn whether the death, widely interpreted as accidental, was really a suicide. Using a second-person narrative voice that eventually morphs into third-person, while also switching between conventional prose and a screenplay format, Larson recounts interviewing police officers in North Dakota who encountered Takako soon before her death, and the police chief in Minnesota who led the subsequent investigation, noting that all, with little evidence, speculated that Takako was either a stripper or prostitute. Larson also describes traveling to Japan, where she befriends a young woman from Takako’s hometown and explores the theory that Takako had made a suicide pact, but uncovers little in the way of hard facts. Though initially intriguing, Larson’s narrative remains emotionally distant throughout, and its stylistic gambits largely unrewarding.

December 1, 2020
From its opening line (""If this book were a film,"") to its ""FADE OUT"" ending, Larson's first book combines memoir, screenplay, and film studies for an exercise in seeking and reflecting truth through art. While in graduate school for filmmaking in the early 2000s, Larson read a newspaper article about a Japanese woman discovered frozen to death in a Minnesota field and was immediately gripped by the mysterious tragedy. The story pieced together at the time was that Takako Konishi was in the Upper Midwest to find the million dollars buried in the fictional film Fargo, and her death was ruled a suicide. Consumed with the need to know the truth, Larson set out to tell it in a film project. She travels to Minnesota and North Dakota to interview hotel staff who spoke to Takako and the law enforcement officers who investigated her death and eventually moves to Japan. If the book, like Larson's journey through Takako's story, occasionally diverges or becomes difficult to follow, and offers few concrete answers, it seems that that is part of the point.

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