Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

I picked up Natsuo Kirino’s Out on a whim, mostly based on the cover and because it was on the end cap at Barnes & Noble. I loved Out. It was bloody, feminist, thrilling, tightly woven. When I saw that Natsuo Kirino had a new book out, I could barely wait for it to hit paperback (which I didn’t, I waited for it to hit my Quality Paperback Book Club). I was worried it wouldn’t be as good, but I was wrong. Grotesque was different, but still excellent.

Grotesque is a dark, brooding novel, much like Out, in which Kirino continues to peel back the dark corners of modern Japan and the everyday darkness women there face. Her characters, though, face the world in such colorful ways – like slicing up abusive husbands in showers. This time around, Kirino tells the story of two women in their 30s who have been killed almost a year apart in the same way. Yuriko and Kazue knew each other a long time ago, and now both turn tricks (one for fun and one to make the rent).  It may seem like the only things these two women might have in common is their professions and their deaths, but really what ties them together is the narrator – a nameless woman who happens to be the older sister of one and the former classmate of the other who tells the tale is an almost monotone and yet self-protective way.

The narrator slowly tells the histories of these two women, telling her own arrogant, desperately clinging story as well. Yuriko is beautiful; in fact, she is pretty much doomed by her looks, as she soon decides it is the only way to make her way in the world. Kazue, on the other hand, is awkward and unpopular, constantly trying to rise and yet getting nowhere.  The narrator is miserable and spiteful of everyone from the beginning.  These girls grow up in a world where survival of the fittest is evident in every move they make.  In this world, conformity is king; there is a place for everything and everything should be in its place. Yuriko is too beautiful. Kazue’s drive for success and popularity is too evident to be accepted.  They really have no chance – and in the end find freedom in their grotesque and monstrous selves.  To become free – to sell themselves as prostitutes - allows them a freedom most in Japanese society can’t find. In the end, that freedom gives them the chance to be murdered by a foreigner and be envied by the narrator, who wallows in her bitterness and hatred.

It’s a powerful indictment of the world Natuso Kirino lives in, and a very powerful voice to be heard. I think Kirino is an amazing writer. You can enjoy her work on a purely superficial level, reveling in the grotesque and disturbingly bloody images she creates, or you can look and see her deeper message. Either way, it’s a deeply disturbing and yet truly enjoyable read.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs – just what I was looking for – a truly disconcerting and liberating book. It would be 5 Purrs but it wasn’t quite as good as Out.