The literary scene has been agog about Kirino’s newer book, Grotesque. It didn’t appeal to me much, so I picked up her earlier book, Out.
It’s hard to read. There’s a deep current of despair; this isn’t the slick, techno-clever Japan of an Isaac Adamson or William Gibson novel. The protagonists are women who work the night shift at a boxed-lunch factory. The happiest of the group lives in a loveless marriage and has a son who won’t speak, which should tell you about how well off everyone else is. One of them commits an impulsive crime and the other women are, one by one, drawn in. The “feminist” blurb makes it sound like they’re in some kind of protective sisterhood, which is exactly not the case.
The ending didn’t work too well for me, but the characters and the plot twists are believable and very real.
mythago
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