Prismatic Pin

Rating: ★★★★☆

Date Read: November 2025

This is a Brazilian true crime story of a woman named Elize Matsunaga (née Araújo) that killed her husband Marcos Matsunaga, the heir of one of the most profitable food companies in Brazil, Yoki. The case became notorious in 2012 due to the fact that she dismembered his body into six pieces and dropped them in the woods. To understand the complexity of this case, it is important to learn about the backstory of them.

Elize was a poor woman from the south countryside of Brazil. She had an alcoholic abusive father that beat up her mother and abandoned them when she was a child. After that, her mother got married again and her stepfather abused her when she was a teenager. In order to survive, Elize had to become a prostitute. She left her small town and went to São Paulo to pursue a better life as a nursing student while working with wealthy clients.

Marcos Matsunaga, one of those clients, was a violent sex addict well known in the prostitution scene of São Paulo. He would often threaten women with guns to do things that they explicitly said before they would not do. Before marrying Elize, he already had a wife and a daughter, whom he abandoned without any pity. Elize knew about that, which does not excuse her behaviour in any way, but she inevitably became a victim after some time. She also got cheated on with another prostitute when she had just given birth to a girl.

After hiring a detective to get proof of her betrayal, Elize confronted Marcos, who had been already expressing signs of abuse. He became furious and threatened to send her to an asylum, humiliating her past and her family background. Tired of hearing that, Elize shot him in the face, but then, she had to find a way to get rid of his body. Using her nursing skills and her hobby as an animal hunter (taught by Marcos himself), she cut his body into six pieces, put them in suitaces, then left them in the woods.

The book is well written, almost in a cinematographic way, and also depicts the life of similar prostitutes in São Paulo. Those stories all have similar themes in common: poverty, abuse, male violence. Even though we should never romanticise or condone Elize's actions, as a woman, I understand what made her do what she did.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Date Read: June 2025

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Rating: ★★★★☆

Date Read: 19 May 2025

This book is very special to me becase I bought it at Merrion Square Park after visiting Oscar Wilde's house across the street. After spending a whole life devoted to him and his works, having the chance to visit the house where he lived during his youth was a life-changing experience.

It is common to read biographies detailing Oscar Wilde's relationships with men, but in fact, looking into his life, he was profoundly shaped by his friendships with several women. Wilde himself was considered an advocate for the rights of women, having worked as the editor of a magazine called The Woman's World. He surrounded himself with educated women, from poets to writers and activists like his own mother, Jane Wilde, an Irish nationalist.

Eleanor Fitzsimons does a solid research work and the depth of details never ceases to amaze me. Due to that, I would recommend this book for Oscar Wilde scholars or those who are severely obsessed with him like me. If your intention is just getting to know more about his life as a whole, Richard Ellmann's biography might be a better fit for you.