The latter crawls under your skin, just the way I like it. Burdened with chores and heavy debts and isolated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives. Brains and talent will never stand up against a girl who is clearly physically attractive. Review: ‘Out’ Natsuo Kirino Septem Jazz In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the draining graveyard shift at a boxed-lunch factory. No matter how intelligent a girl may be, no matter her many talents, these attributes are not easily discerned. Out is a page-turner, whereas Grotesque is more like a Russian novel. Natsuo Kirino, 3.70 avg rating 502 ratings Quotes by Natsuo Kirino () For a girl, appearance can be a powerful form of oppression. Recency bias? Maybe, but the books deviate so much from each other in style and perspective that I don’t think that’s it. This is the second book of Kirino’s I’ve read - the other being the amazing Out - and I look forward to reading more.Īs much as I loved Out, I think I love Grotesque more. As with O’Connor, the writing sticks to the bone and the moral philosophy weighs on the mind long after.

Grotesque is epic in scope and haunting in execution. She comes to relish the confused reactions people have upon learning that she and Yuriko are sisters. They are both murdered by a client.įor the narrator, the path is a “sea of hatred” - she develops an armor of malicious wit, bitterness and resignation. Any path they tread is treacherous.įor Yuriko and Kazue, that path is sex work, though they arrive by different means and with different motivations. The female leads - Yuriko, the monstrous beauty Kazue, whose determination is greater than her social awareness and the unnamed narrator, who is Yuriko’s older sister and self-described shadow to her sister’s light - are born into a system built for them to fail. There is no escape hatch for either the reader or the characters. It put me in mind of Flannery O’Connor, not in the aspect of prose but in the weight of oppression and despair. Beauty and deformity drip from every page in this transgressive thriller. This is a book that lives up to its name.

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