They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but it was precisely the cover that drew me to Out. It’s striking in its simplicity and pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the plot.
I had wanted to pick this up for ages, but never seemed to get round to it. I’ve even managed to read Kirino’s Grotesque previously, even though Out had been in British bookstores for longer. Out was the first English translation of Kirino’s books to be published. Set in her native Japan, it’s a hard hitting crime novel that is not for the faint of heart.
Following four female colleagues who work the graveyard shift making boxed lunches, the plot soon dives into the seedy underworld of suburban Tokyo. All four of the women have very different but equally difficult home lives until the young housewife Yaoi, murders her husband in retaliation for his mistreatment of her and her two young children. Panicking, she calls her friend and colleague, Masako, to help her. Before long Masako has roped in their friends ‘The Skipper’ and Kuniko to help dismember and dispose of the body. It seems they’ve got away with it, until that is, bags of body parts are found in a local park and the police start asking them questions…
As you can probably tell, it’s a pretty intense book. There are some incredibly graphic descriptions and subject matters and I found myself wincing more than once. As I’d read Kirino before, I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy ride but no amount of mental preparation dulls the power of these scenes. Whilst the subject matter is undoubtedly dark, Kirino does not glorify in these scenes. Rather, we watch as the four women get sucked further and further into a murky world, as their lives slowly unravel, as they try to cope with the mental and spiritual scars they have inflicted on themselves. As the net pulls in around them, the atmosphere becomes unbearably tense, with the feeling that retribution is just around the corner.
Kirino creates realistic characters, worn down from years of drudgery. It’s a bleak view of the world, yet she never lapses into polarisation. Even the most repulsive characters like Kuniko and the lone shark Satake are complex and there are moments where I felt genuine pity for both. Likewise, the characters painted as mostly good (the put upon and the misunderstood) show realistic slivers of steel and undercurrents of cruelty, demonstrating that in Kirino’s world, as in life, good people can sometimes to bad things.
Although often disturbing, the narrative pulls you into turning the pages and I found myself genuinely caring if the women would get away with their crime or not. Kirino knows exactly when and how to amp up the tension, depicting slow burn scenes where nothing much happens accept the characters wondering how much longer they have left before they’re found out. In some ways, it’s quite an internal book with the main characters taking turns to share with us their point of view, their interactions with others dulled by the events they have witnessed and taken part in.
Due to the subject matter, I felt as if I didn’t want to spend too much time in the book lest the characters dark views started wearing off onto me. Finishing the book is like rising out of a murky pool: you feel like you need a mental shower to make yourself clean again. The grubby, sordid tale is so realistic and well written, that although you may not spend a very long time with the characters, you’ll carry the story around for much longer.
Despite my squeamishness, it’s a brilliantly daring novel: I doubt very much that you’ll have read anything similar. Unlike most crime novels, there are no hero detectives, no fiendishly clever, morally straight protagonists to root for. Kirino spins the situation on its head in that you’re essentially rooting for the criminals. Nothing is black or white in this world and everything is complicated.
Out is a compellingly tense psychological thriller that will leave you questioning your own morality: it’s a fairly quick read, but is not an easy one. If I were you, I’d line up a nice, light-hearted comedy to read straight afterwards, trust me, you’ll need it.
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