Book Review: "Out" by Natsuo Kirino

The world of the Japanese mundane is something that is being explored more and more in the post-modern fiction that is now coming out of there. Alongside this mundane, there will always be another part of the story where the mundane is turned around and the people inhabiting the mundane are forced to come to terms with the fact that their lives are not exactly that ordinary after all. The authors of these works go all the way back to Yukio Mishima and then, move into our own day in which Yoko Ogawa inhabits the literary landscape of Japan. One of the books that I have read regarding the mundane by an author I have not heard of before this is “Out” by Natsuo Kirino. Told in frightening precision, there are a number of incidents and things that make the characters seem like they are a part of a world that is formed against them, to keep them in a loop of the rat-race, to keep them working like dogs until they die even though they cannot pay for very much anything. However, these characters are ultimately flung into another part of this very same world where they are all forced to become another person because now, they cannot go back to the way things were before.

The novel is the story of four different women who each live difficult and mundane lives in Tokyo, Japan. We have Masako, Kuniko, Yoshie and Yayoi - and they are all working day-in and day-out. Each of the women seem to be recognisable by a certain quality. Masako is the leader, the one who can lend others money and steer people in the right direction. Kuniko is vain and slightly naive. Yoshie is responsible and caring - she cares for her elderly mother after this elderly woman suffered a terrible stroke and can no longer do very much for herself. Yayoi tries her best to raise her two young sons but she and her sons are constantly abused by the drunken, gambling father - Kenji. Then something turns. One day one of the four women phones another one of the four women saying that she has murdered someone and that they have to help her hide the body. The four women chip in and the body is disposed of. But things begin to happen as hints turn up all over Tokyo and facts don’t seem to be straight at all. The women seem to be falling apart at the seems and a loan shark isn’t far behind. Debts need to be paid and you can only wonder at what exactly happened that fateful night all that time ago and whether anyone is really telling the truth anymore at all.

An incredible achievement of Japanese Mystery Fiction, this book showcases the late 90s of Japan’s scene of literary drama, tension and crime at its very best. Only a couple of years before the sensational “Battle Royale” would break dark Japanese literature on to the international scene, “Out” has to be one of the best books I have read of its kind. Dramatic as it is, the tension is incredible. The book is nice and thick and so everything moves really slowly and the burning of the metaphorical candle is forever going and going until we come to parts of increasing suspense. Natsuo Kirino writes these characters amazingly, each with their own vices that will come back later on in the novel Ince the entire story starts to fall apart and the reader feels as if they can no longer believe any one person more than the next.