My reading list for the Japanese Literature Challenge included Out by Natsuo Kirino, which had got glowing reviews from Jackie at FarmLaneBooks. However, the book is still "in the post" even though Amazon assured me it was dispatched over ten days ago. I have no idea now if I'll still receive it; I can only hope. Best laid plans, and all that jazz.
So, when I spotted Real World by the same author in my library, I grabbed it as fast as I could. And finished reading it in one sitting today! Yes, it is the type of book that you just can't put down. And the fact that I'm writing this review at 1am, fifteen minutes after finishing the book speaks volumes about it.
The very-slim book revolves around four teenage high-school girls, cramming for a University place through their summer holidays. All four are very different in character; there's quiet and dependable Toshi, confused lesbian Yazun, intellectual Terauchi, and the "well-brought-up" Kirarin who is actually sexually experienced and dangerously addicted to chat rooms. When Toshi's neighbour Worm kills his mother and goes on the run, the four are drawn by the danger and try, in their own ways, to help him.
This is not a murder mystery, as we know from the beginning who the murderer is. The book is more concerned with the characters of the five protagonists, going into great detail about their backgrounds and thought processes. I found it very disturbing to be trapped in the head of a teenager. There was a very real sense of the difficulties the girls were faced with. They are having to deal with a world their parents are not familiar with, showing how fast Japan has moved in a single generation. This increases their isolation, and the steps they take to deal with this is very disturbing (even without the murder!). Kirino describes some very seedy parts of Japan, and the pressures the girls have to confront is unbelievable. I would have cracked under less. I am not familiar with Japan to judge whether these things are usual there, or if Kirino has plumbed the extremes of society. I would be very interested to find out.
This is a dark study of teenage angst, and in this the author has succeeded. But the voices started to grate after a while. Call me cynical, but I wanted to shake the girls, and Worm, very hard to jolt them out of their misery. To my surprise, I found the language very clunky; this is definitely not the best translation I have read. I assume (hope) Kirino's other novels had a better translator as I have not heard any complaints about the language-structure before.
I have nothing to compare this book to, but I assume it is not one of Kirino's best works. It is a good taster though, and I look forward eagerly to getting my copy of Out. If only Royal Mail and/or Amazon get their act together. Grrr!
