Nothing in Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino's award-winning literary mystery Out.
This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot's ringleader but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society.
At once a masterpiece of literary suspense and pitch-black comedy of gender warfare, Out is also a moving evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds and the friendships that bolster them in the aftermath.
Four women getting dragged into the deadly criminal scene of Tokyo
4 stars
The author did a great job at bringing this grim atmosphere to live. We follow four women trying to get by with a bad paying job in the night shift of a factory. All of them have their respective problems but one day one of the women drastically changes that.
For anyone wanting to read an atmospheric crime story set in '90s Tokyo should pick this up. We get a look at the less favourable sides of this city and its' citizens.
I just want a book where the criminals run an efficient and successful enterprise and never get caught
4 stars
This book wasn't that, but it was interesting. I've literally never read a book by a Japanese author before, so maybe I don't have a good background to describe this. I guess it's like the The Jungle or The Grapes of Wrath was an edgy thriller about four women in 90s Japan. The characters have been ground down by globalized capitalism and other systems of exploitation until they are willing to do literally anything to escape their current lives. Eventually, they do escape in different ways, but the price is pretty high. Unlike those other two books, here's no socialist moralizing, but that kind of fits with the setting (I wonder what happened to Japanese Leftism in the 1950s...).
The start of this book hooked me with a vividly depressing account of lower middle class life, and the middle part was very exciting. I didn't like the ending very much, ā¦
This book wasn't that, but it was interesting. I've literally never read a book by a Japanese author before, so maybe I don't have a good background to describe this. I guess it's like the The Jungle or The Grapes of Wrath was an edgy thriller about four women in 90s Japan. The characters have been ground down by globalized capitalism and other systems of exploitation until they are willing to do literally anything to escape their current lives. Eventually, they do escape in different ways, but the price is pretty high. Unlike those other two books, here's no socialist moralizing, but that kind of fits with the setting (I wonder what happened to Japanese Leftism in the 1950s...).
The start of this book hooked me with a vividly depressing account of lower middle class life, and the middle part was very exciting. I didn't like the ending very much, it managed to be unexpected, disturbing, and cliche all at the same time. At least things worked out for my favorite character.
What was really special about this book was the exploration of the experience of doing something horrific, but necessary. How would it actually feel, moment-to-moment, to have participated in incredibly gruesome violence? How would you cope? When, if ever, will it catch up with you, emotionally? I assume Natsuo Kirino has never chopped anybody into little pieces herself, but she is very, very good at imagining it.
Based on the reviews, Iām glad I stopped reading this when I did. Iām kind of actively avoiding books with SA wherever I can.
But what actually made me stop is that I was getting bored - it was getting unwieldy. I enjoyed the first 100 ish pages, but the additional perspectives outside of the 4 women were very frustrating. The details were increasingly overwhelming any tension the story had.
Great! A compelling story that felt like a natural sequence of events. The characters were all interesting and believable. Overall, a story about money, survival, and what we can be reduced to.
