EPS Review #184 - Out
★★
28Sep08

Out: A Novel, by Natsuo Kirino, Vintage, 2004, 520pp.

Still, for the sake of argument, suppose the wife had managed to kill him and had gone off to her job as though nothing had happened. Then, who had gone to work on the body? The bathroom at the victim's house was too small, and the crime lab hadn't turned up anything. So, let's assume some of her friends at work decided to help her. He knew that women were capable of this; in fact, they seemed to have a certain affinity for it - for the whole dismemberment thing. He'd been doing some checking into the records and had turned up two common features in past incidents involving women and chopped-up bodies. One was that the crimes tended to be unpremeditated, almost haphazard in origin, and the other was that they tended to bring out a feminine solidarity.

I turned this up in my hunt for a good genre writer from Japan. The trouble is "this whole dismemberment thing" -- 520 pages is too many on that topic, although the writing was good enough to propel me through it all. I just did not enjoy it very much. I certainly hope that bento boxes are not made by such slave laborers.

It reminded me some of In the Realm of the Senses.

Kirino has won prizes for her other books ... I might try another one.


Paul wrote: I thought the end of the book was creepy and vastly unsatisfying. Didn't like it much!


I replied: What made you pick it to read?


Paul answered: Japanese murder mystery with women looked fun at the book store a year ago.