Out

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes Gruesome, Mostly Gripping
Review: "Out" was first published in 1997 and won Japan's top mystery award. It is Natsuo Kirino's first novel to be translated into English. Set in Tokyo, it's centred around four women who work the nightshift in a boxed-lunch factory. The pay is good for a part-time job, but the work is far from rewarding, the hours aren't sociable and the chances for progression are limited. Unfortunately, their home lives aren't much better.

Yoshie is the most likeable of the four friends. She is nicknamed the Skipper since she is so hard-working and effectively runs the line the women work on. Yoshie's husband died from cirrhosis, leaving her to look after her family and mother-in-law - who'd suffered a stroke more than six years previously. She's finding it difficult to make ends meet : the insurance from her husband's death, and her own savings, have been spent - largely on looking after her mother-in-law. She is desperate for her daughter to receive a good education. Meanwhile, her landlord is talking about tearing down her dilapidated house, hoping to build a modern apartment block. Yoshie knows this will involve higher rents.

Kuniko is a different matter entirely. Vain and self-absorbed, she is a thoroughly dislikeable character. She lies about her age, drives an expensive, imported car and spends beyond her means on clothes. She had claimed to be married to her live-in boyfriend : sensibly, he blows town early in the book and carefully covers his tracks. Due to the money she spends on her image, she owes a fortune to a loan-shark.

At 34, Yayoi is the youngest and prettiest of the four friends. Kenji, her husband, had once pursued her relentlessly. However, once married, things changed dramatically. Kenji started spending more time away from home, drinking and gambling. Recently, he had been visiting two clubs in Kabuki-cho. In one, he had been spending a great deal of time (and money) in the company of a beautiful hostess. In the other, he'd lost a fortune at the baccarat tables - including the couple's savings. Eventually, after an argument, Yayoi's patience snaps and she strangles him. She then phones Masako : unsure what to do, she knows her colleague will help her.

Although the focus of the book switches from one character to another, Masako is essentially the book's central character. In her early forties, she is married and has one son. Down-to-earth, and more experienced than her colleagues, her three friends seem to rely on her in particular. The book opens and closes with her and, after Yayoi's confession, it is Masako who makes many of the key decisions.

Although Yayoi knew Kenji had blown a fortune, and suspected he'd been in a fight the night she killed him, she didn't know the full story. The clubs he'd been visiting were owned by Mitsuyoshi Satake who, in recent weeks, had come to view Kenji as a nuisance. Kenji was stalking his top hostess and was behind in his bill at 'Playground' (his illegal, after-hours, baccarat club). Eventually, Satake 'deals' with him, using a method that involved Kenji bouncing down a flight of stairs. Unfortunately for Satake, Yayoi's subsequent actions see him under investigation. With a past he'd rather hide, and in illegal club to protect, this is something he is far form pleased about.

A little grim in places, a bit depressing in others - although I found it a touch implausible at times. In particular, I couldn't understand Masako. I found it hard to believe, for example, she could be so detached with what was not only happening around her, but also to her. Nevertheless, "Out" is a very-well-written book and is easily read. Definitely recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A Riveting Look at the Japanese Dark Side
Review: As Edgar Allen Poe and Rod Serling both demonstrated, the best horror stories take place in the most mundane settings, involving the most ordinary people. Natsuo Kirino's OUT brilliantly follows this dictum, presenting a chilling tale of murder and dismemberment under the most ordinary of circumstances. The result is a gripping page-turner that turns victimizers into victims and ultimately probes the darkest corners of the Japanese psyche.

OUT begins with four typical Japanese women who work the night shift together at a box lunch factory. Masako Katori is a middle-aged, former office worker locked into a loveless marriage to a self-isolating husband and an intentionally mute teenage son. Yoshie Azuma is a widow in her late fifties, burdened with the care of an incontinent mother-in-law and two self-centered daughters. Kuniko Jonouchi is an overweight and materialistic young woman whose live-in "husband" has just abandoned her and her small mountain of credit debt. Yayoi Yamamoto is a pretty young mother of two children and wife to a gambling, skirt-chasing husband who has blown their life savings at the baccarat tables of a club owned by Mitsuyoushi Satake, a small-time hood with a horrifying secret past.

It is Yayoi who triggers events by strangling her husband in a fit of rage. Realizing what she has done, she calls Masako for help, and they jointly decide to hide the murder and get rid of the body. Their solution eventually sucks Yoshie and Kuniko into their plot, and Satake is fingered by the police as the most likely killer of Yayoi's husband. Satake loses both of his clubs as a consequence and sets out on a course of revenge. The four women's lives head into a free falling death spiral as they are unwittingly drawn into one another's lives and into the yakuza underworld. Desperation leads them to more and more shocking actions, resulting in two of their deaths and a chilling battle of wits, culminating in a sado-masochistic climax.

Kirino's writing is serviceable for this type of book, not rich in imagery or description but well-paced, focusing on actions and character motivations. She maintains her characters' sense of desperation and builds her story to a suspenseful climax, leaving the reader guessing how her main characters will respond to events. Kirino is most successful in tracing Masako's discovery of hidden strengths as well as her descent into horrifying depravity. We identify with Masako, leaving us wondering just how dark might be the deepest corners of our own souls.

OUT struck me as a particularly Japanese novel, following that culture's peculiar fascination with ritualistic murder and masochistic infliction of pain evidenced by writers like Mishima, movies like IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, and even the recent spate of pop horror movies like THE RING. America's dark side tends toward mass murderers and serial killers, most of whom are regarded as social misfits or freaks (such as Jeffrey Dahmer, or Hannibal Lechter). The power of Kirino's OUT lies in the very ordinariness of its four female protagonists.

I bought OUT as an airplane read before an 18-hour flight; it proved to be an excellent choice for some badly needed escapism. I am hardly an expert on crime novels, but I recommend this book highly as a good read and a bleak look at the underside of modern Japanese life and culture.



Rating:
Summary: Japanese lit joins the real world
Review: First published in Japan in 1998, this psychological thriller won the Naoki Prize, a major literary award. (She was also nominated for the Edgar in 2004.) What amazes me is that none of the reviews I've read mentioned the book's thoroughly Hitchcockian atmosphere and plot development. You can see things coming that make you wince in anticipation. And you sometimes want to yell at the characters -- especially the selfish, self-centered Kuniko -- "Don't be stupid! Don't do it!" (Can't wait for the movie!) Kirino, who used to work as a club hostess herself, reveals a desperate, gritty world of female night-shift workers and gambling clubs and small-time hoods, none of which are the slightest bit romanticized. Families won't speak to each other, husbands drink to submerge their depression, women drown in their own desperation. And Yayoi, a young, beautiful wife and mother, passes the last point of patience and strangles her womanizing husband who has thrown away their life savings. She turns for help to Masako, strongest of four friends on the night shift at a boxed lunch factory, and after that there's no turning back for any of them. These are not the quiet, giggling childlike women that writers like Kawabata and Mishima insist are unique to Japan; they're real people not subject to traditional sentimental male values and prejudices, and they have far more in common with ordinary women in other cultures than Westerners would have thought. And Kirino's willingness to say so has had a groundbreaking effect on Japanese literature generally. But this is not to slight her other characters, especially Jumonji, the on-the-make loan shark who wants to recruit Masako as a business partner, and Satake, the disturbingly bent ex-con who has killed for love -- sort of. In fact, the only thing wrong with this book is the rather flat, uninspired translation, but even that won't keep this story from gripping you by the throat.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling novel-noir
Review: Four (4) women, various ages, all work together on the late night shift in a Japanese food factory. Each woman's personality dictates the particular place she takes on the assembly line. Their jobs are simply making lunch sandwiches - but about 600 sandwiches a night. On top of their awful low paying and boring jobs, each has a hard and miserable personal life. Early on in the novel one by one they come together to "help" one of the group who needs to cover up a murder she has committed. The women then justify their particpation in the cover up by claiming they are doing it for much needed money - money that hasn't been promised them though. The characters and scenery come to life in the way the details are presented, no matter the subject. In fact, it is because of these details that this book immediately sets itself apart from most others. The book is a real page turner and the fact that it very clearly takes place in Japan is a big factor in making the book a winner. For me, it's not just great storylines but those in combination with the fascinating and unusual Japanese customs and traditions, brings it way over the top. Before I was done I knew that I would be reading more Japanese crime fiction, that's for sure. I didn't know what I was missing until I read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Desperate housewives--Japanese style
Review: Four women who work the night shift at a boxed lunch factory become involved in a nightmarish spiral of murder, mutilation, and cover-up when one of them kills her husband in a fit of passion. Each of them is caught in a domestic trap that makes them vulnerable to desperate schemes born of hopelessness. Masako is a strong, capable woman who lives in a sterile, loveless household. Beautiful Yayoi has two children and is saddled with a philandering gambler for a husband. Skipper is a widow who barely ekes out a living caring for her mother-in-law, a teenage daughter, and a nephew. Kuniko is a vain, despicable woman, self-centered and deep in debt. One of the many pleasures of this suspenseful novel is watching how the consequences of their actions radiate, like ripples from a stone dropped into still water, until they awaken the long-repressed sadistic passions of a disturbed killer.

Perhaps Kirino could be faulted for telegraphing some of her plot developments earlier than necessary, but this remains an exceedingly powerful suspense novel. I was drawn into the lives of these women and was sorry when the story came to an end. An added bonus is the glimpse it provides of Japan's dark side, a much needed humanizing touch for Americans who still hold a stereotypical view of Japan as a society of polite human worker bees. I hope more of Kirino's novels will be translated into English in the near future.


Rating:
Summary: Dark and highly inventive thriller
Review: Having read my way through the currently available translations of the Japanese classics of the mystery genre I came across Kirino's "Out": a dark, but very satisfying surprise.

Women in Japan follow their European and American sisters still more than a few steps behind. Despite the rosy picture some books and movies try to paint, the land of the rising sun is still very much a man's world. Moreover, acts like openly studying hard core porn while surrounded by female fellow subway travelers is still very much accepted Japanese male behavior.

This kind of atmosphere pervades Kirino's "sisters are doing it (mostly) by themselves mystery", which visits the darker back alleys of Japanese life and of mankind and its motives in general.

In a truly virtuoso performance featuring a cast a wonderful three dimensional characters and their interactions that have the authentic "stranger than fiction" quality the writer takes us on a highly energetic and stimulating rollercoaster ride. While the reader at no moment gets bothered by any even veiled intellectualisms it is clear how well Kirino is versed in classical (Japanese) mystery writing, in existentialists like Heidegger and Sartre, feminists like de Beauvoir and Greere and students of the twisted mind like Freud and de Sade.

All this knowledge gets combined with a superb sense of pacing and amazing sense of finding new "counterpoint" between its characters. The result is a dense 300+ page turner, that at times is disturbingly dark and gruesome, but represents a truly transcendental classic of modern mystery writing.

Rating:
Summary: A Perfect Square of Rice
Review: Honestly I have never been a big fan of mystery novels. Not that I have anything against them, but I just have never read them. The only one in recent memory that I have read was Miyuki Miyabe's _All She was Worth_ which was a very enjoyable read. Now I have read this book, and let me say I was pretty creeped out without the contents within. The book starts out simply enough describing in mundane detail the daily lives of four women, Masako, Yayoi, Yoshie, and Kuniko, who work at a industry that assembles ready to eat meals. Kuniko is an overweight flashy woman with expensive tastes who also suffers from very low self esteem. Yoshie, called the Skipper because of her hard work ethic, is a long suffering mother of two rebelious girls and the daughter in law of bed ridden woman. Her life is completely dedicated to taking care of others. Yayoi is the beautiful wife of Kenji Yamamoto a man who use to be very affectionate to her, but who has recently fallen for a bar hostess and become addicted to gambling. Then there is Masako a tall, thin 43 year old woman who hides her bitter past from her friends and endures a distant husband and a mute by choice son at home. She is, however, a lady of steel.

Kirino has created an interesting ensemble of characters that the reader can easily identify with. Characters that the reader will both love and pity and readers that s/he will completely loathe. A wonderful book, but please have a strong stomach before you read it. Kirino is quite a graphic writer describing such things as dismemberment and rape. You have been warned...

Rating:
Summary: Queen of Mystery
Review: I am a HUGE FAN of Kirino Natsuo!! I always thought that it was really sad that I could not share her books with my friends who cannot read Japanese. But hey, here is her book in English! Bravo! Her descriptions of characters and backgrounds are incredibly real and vivid since they are most of the times inspired by the real people on the real problems of Japanese society. Her analysis over those problematic situations is always deep and critical so that it often shocks you by revealing the painful reality and the drama underneath our everyday life. In her books, reality does not byte, but stabs. So, if you are ready to be shocked and stabbed by the undeniable reality, I would recommend her books to you, but if not, you'd better stay away from them because you'll see what you don't want to see. Anyways, I love her books. "Gyokuran" is actually my favorite book. Hopefully, that one will be translated and brought to American fans soon, too.

Rating:
Summary: Exceptionally Good Picture of the Underside of Japan
Review: I approached this book with reservations. I had read very good reviews about it but I also read that much of its impact was from the atmosphere it creates and not simply from the plot. Usually this would not be a concern but as I have read some Japanese novels that were unbelievably esoteric, it raised a red flag. Also, I heard that there were heavy themes of women's "second class" status and "women's empowerment" throughout the book, which are usually code phrases for women who may be in tough spots, but often no worse than many men, and who respond by being as nasty as possible to men and are thereafter applauded for behavior for which a man would be trashed. I decided to buy the book with a gift certificate figuring I had nothing to lose and that the book would be either very bad or very good. It was very good.

The book is actually not a mystery but rather a crime novel. I dislike reviews that reveal significant plot twists, so let me assure any reader that I am not revealing anything noteworthy when I say the murder occurs early, we know it is the wife who did it, we know why and we know her friends on the night shift help dispose of the body. The mystery is whether they will be caught and how the crime affects the women, all of whom are indeed in tough personal spots. The murder acts as a catalyst for drawing their individual personal difficulties into the foreground and creating the types of conflict and tension that genuinely makes readers wonder what they would do in such situations.

Kirino does an excellent job of developing the plot. Loose ends are not only resolved but often the reader does not know something is a loose end until it arises a second time at the worst possible moment to push a character even further into a corner. The characters are well drawn and the reader can relate to them easily. Though, on one of the few drawbacks of the book, the actual language employed by the author is often a bit too clinical for a book of this type. Such language, almost technical in nature, is not so overpowering as to detract from the plot, the characters or the gloomy atmosphere created, but it was noticeable, especially in a novel with so many strengths going for it.

I find it difficult to say which was most powerful - the solid plot, the strong character development or the dark atmosphere about a side of Japan not seen in the travel brochures. What I can say is that the combination made for an excellent book that is well worth recommending.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I was drawn into it's web, and very much enjoyed the intricate weave the author spun. Not for children, it's a look into a lives of everyday, weathered people, unsure of their place in their world and struggling to find one.