Karuizawa – where Worm and Kirarin got into an accident.Īfter writing about adults, Natsuo Kirino wrote about highschoolers and the pressure they experience in The Real World.

Kazue and Yuriko’s tales were told through their diaries and she dedicated a whole chapter on the killer’s affidavit, which turned out to be a total BS. While she followed the same style of different chapters told from the perspective of the characters, I feel like something is amiss. And the worst thing is, she thinks she is better than everyone else, but she ended up like Kazue and Yuriko.

She is a total bystander or a background character from beginning to end. In my opinion, the sister is an unreliable narrator and I feel that the story can get away without her. Prostitution is a major theme in this book and showed how beauty can be a woman’s weapon and cause of her demise. It showed how it started in society’s smallest unit – family then in school and in the real world. In Grotesque, Kirino showed the patriarchal society where men ruled the world and how women struggled and compete, not only with men, but also with each other. However, I find the attraction of Masako to Satake a bit confusing at the book’s climax. The plot is riveting and I know the motivations of every character to do what they did. I think Out is Kirino’s strongest English-translated novel. In this book, Natsuo Kirino showed how yakuza and loan sharks work and take advantage of the weak. These women really got the shorter end of a stick and they were struggling to find a way out.

Readers will soon realise that there is no crime that goes unpunished, but do they deserve it? The world is unfair and readers learn that hard work is not always rewarded. Somehow, it reminded me of an old Japanese film I saw – Cold Fish. In her debut novel Out, at first, I thought it is about women fucking men over and getting away with murder. This author reveals the unpretty things in society and in humans, especially how some people use others for their own benefit. Natsuo Kirino writes about the other face of Japan where the light of wealth and progress does not shine. Ueno Park – where the dismembered body in Out was found.

Real world kirino