I'm basically in love with Natsuo Kirino. A hugely famous and well-respected literary novelist from Japan, Kirino was introduced to North America in 2003 when "Out" was translated into English. Earlier this year, I read her second novel to be translated: "Grotesque." It knocked me straight onto my (formidable) ass- I had never before met such a spiteful, unlikeable, complicated main character. Sadly, because I read it in the early summer, it's ineligible for a clammy. Picking up "Out" was, in a way, my strategy for making Natsuo Kirino eligible. Frankly, I think I like "Out" better than "Grotesque," which is an enormous compliment because both are brilliant.
"Out" begins in a bleak box-lunch factory in the suburban outskirts of Tokyo, as four women- Masako, Yayoi, Yoshie and Kuniko- work the night shift together. Simultaneously grueling and tedious, the work is awful, but all four women need to do it for their own reasons. Masako is hardly on speaking terms with her husband and son, so she's there in order to work opposite shifts from them. Yayoi, the young and pretty one, is helping her husband save money so they can move into a new apartment with their young kids. Yoshie is widowed and taking care of a teenaged daughter and invalid mother-in-law. Kuniko is fat and vain, obsessed with fashion, makeup, and imported cars, and is understandably struggling under a mountain of debt.
One night, when Yayoi's husband comes home drunk, admits that he's spent all their savings on gambling and prostitutes, and then hits her, everything changes. In a strange, surreal moment of rage and psychosis, she strangles him with his belt. Later, at the factory, she confesses to Masako who, for reasons she herself is unsure of, agrees to take care of everything. The four women cut up Yayoi's husband's body in Masako's bathroom, divide the pieces among themselves, and scatter them in dumpsters across the suburbs. What follows is a grisly, disturbing novel as the women get away with the crime, but are ultimately found out by the man who was accused of it and later released for lack of evidence.
While Yayoi, Masako, Yoshie, and Kuniko are given almost equal narrative attention, this is really Masako's story. Masako is the one woman out of the four who originally insists on not being paid for her part in cutting up and disposing of the body. What's more, through crossing this line, Masako finds that she has a predilection for sociopathic behaviour. She encounters another criminal- a thug she crossed paths with in an earlier career- and realizes that they have a lot in common. Together with Yoshie (by far the most financially desperate of the women), they start a business cutting up and disposing of bodies for a Tokyo gang, all the while being stalked and threatened by the man who has found them out.
It would be easy enough to say that "Out" is propelled by shock-value alone, but that isn't really the case. There is nothing gimmicky about Kirino's clever depiction of a bleak world where a woman's choice of husband determines her destiny. This book is as much theme-driven as it is plot-driven, being ultimately about perverse feminism, vigilante justice, and our own potential for evil. In one of the most memorable scenes in the book, Yoshie flatly says that cutting up bodies isn't so different from changing her mother-in-law's diapers or working the line at the boxed-lunch factory. It's the work no one else wants to do.
A few critics have argued that the prose is flat and wooden. It sometimes is, but I'm tempted to blame the translation. Even the Guardian's Stephen Poole, in a lukewarm review, admits that the "flat, funtional prose" is occasionally illuminated by a strange lyricism. I was particularly impressed by this line about the gradual deadening of expectations and hope in the women's suburban lives:
"When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth undernearth; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. there was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world."
"Out" won Japan's top mystery award when it was published in its original language in 1997.
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