Out by Natsuo Kirino

fiction/mystery, (c) 2005, 400pp
rating: ****

I ran across this book when I was looking for more things to read when I ran out of literature when I was working in London. I didn't buy it then because of the sticker price (high exchange rate is a killer on books particularly), but I tucked the idea of this book away. Finally, this year, I decided to read it.

Out tells the story of four friends/colleagues that work the night shift at a company that makes packaged bento box meals. Each one of them has their own reasons for working the night shift, and each one has severe problems at home. Matsuo's family members orbit around each other without ever caring or interacting with each other. Kumiko is mired in debt and has spending problems. Yoshie is stuck caring for her ungrateful children and her aging mother in law and Yayoi's husband gambles and cheats on her. In a fit of rage one night, Yayoi strangles her husband with his own belt and calls her friends to help her figure out what to do. In this way, all four of them are pulled into the more criminal underbelly of this Tokoyo suburb.

Kirino won the Grand Prix award in Japan for this novel and it is well deserved. Though it is filed under the "mystery" section in Barnes and Nobles, it's not really a mystery. We find out exactly what the crime is and how it happens in the first thirty pages or so. The beauty of this book is watching everything unfold and seeing how Masako particularly manages her situation. Kirino has done a good job making all of the characters extremely realistic and this makes the reader invest in them. She also includes a young loan shark, a Brazilian immigrant and a casino owner as supporting characters and does an excellent job fleshing them out as well. The fact that all of these ladies work the night shift and so live in an inverse of everyone around them adds an additional darkness to this novel that makes it even moodier.

The other nice thing about this book is that it doesn't fetishize japanese culture (likely because it is a crime novel written by a Japanese woman). Many works of fiction and movies made by western writers fall prey to orientalism (read the essay if you haven't!). They either play up the young, hip, edgy teenagers or the rigidity of the culture. This book depicts a different side of Japanese culture and life and is refreshing to read.

I only had two quibbles with this book. Quibble #1 - it is quite long, and while most of it is a page turner, it definitely dragged just a little in the last quarter of the book. Quibble #2: The ending is a little ... odd, and somewhat disturbing. To say more than that would give it away. Overall, I highly recommend it.