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Out

by Natsuo Kirino, Stephen Snyder (Translator)

3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 · rating details · 8,126 ratings · 1,045 reviews

Nothing in Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino’s award-winning literary mystery Out.

This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to di...more

Paperback, 1st Edition, 416 pages

Published January 4th 2005 by Vintage (first published 1997)

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Apr 18, 2009 Yulia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Yulia by: Frank Bogues

Shelves: by-and-of-japan, criminal-intent, read-to-me-by-frank

A literary page-turner as timely as when it first came out, this biting critique of Japan's social and economic underclass begins when three female co-workers are forced to confront the act of a friend against her abusive husband, but evolves into a blistering exposé on those whose stories are never told: the unseen night-shift factory workers who make Japan's endless supply of box lunches; women who are swamped in credit-card debt but cannot live off their looks, youth, or father's paychecks as...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Ally marked it as to-read Recommends it for: crime fans, Japanese fans, people who like anti-heroes

Shelves: asian, favorites

This is my favorite book. I almost didn't finish reading it, because the beginning is rather boring and bleak. I set it aside for a year, but after reading more good things about the author, I picked it up again and I am so glad I did!
From the perspective of an American reader, this book is refreshingly different from the usual crime novel. There are no completely "good" or "bad" characters, only those you root for and against. And by the end, some of that might change a little. Kirino does an e...more

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May 06, 2008 Shannon (Giraffe Days) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, crime, 2008, favourite, cover-love

There's just something about Japan that produces the grittiest, darkest, scariest, most realistic horror, psychological thriller, and suspense. The seedy underbelly of Japanese society is perhaps so successfully portrayed because so little has been embellished. And with the dark, empty surburban streets, so much is possible, so much can go unnoticed. In Natsuo Kirino's wonderful crime novel, Out, a sharp social commentary on Japan's patriarchal society and the situation for women and foreigners...more

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Oct 12, 2007 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: lit-foreign

Natsuo Kirino is hard-core. This book starts out with a kind've "accidental" murder of a husband, then the wife asks her three factory buddies to help her out with getting rid of the body and coming up with a story. You ever want to know how to slice and dice somebody, there's an awful lot of detail in here. But the point is, it's 4 very different women trying to deal with that, and then the fall-out. Kirino gives you a snapshot of the gender roles in Japanese society, and what's roiling around...more

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Dec 28, 2010 Tressa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese, murder, mystery, 2010

Out by Natsuo Kirino is a brilliant Japanese murder mystery that’s not much of a mystery at all, at least not a mystery in the sense that we don’t know whodunit. Whodunit is a pretty, young wife and mother of two named Yayoi who is fed up with her husband Kenji’s philandering ways, and decides to strangle him one night in an uncharacteristic moment of rage. Assured that her children heard nothing of the struggle, she calls a friend who works the night shift with her at a boxed lunch factory. As...more Out by Natsuo Kirino is a brilliant Japanese murder mystery that’s not much of a mystery at all, at least not a mystery in the sense that we don’t know whodunit. Whodunit is a pretty, young wife and mother of two named Yayoi who is fed up with her husband Kenji’s philandering ways, and decides to strangle him one night in an uncharacteristic moment of rage. Assured that her children heard nothing of the struggle, she calls a friend who works the night shift with her at a boxed lunch factory. As she suspects, the pragmatic Masako Katori is not too surprised by the late call, and immediately sets the wheels in motion about how to make the body disappear and maybe make a little money off the insurance payout.

Masako enlists the help of the trusted fifty-something Yoshie, whom she knows is in desperate need of money from caring for her bedridden mother-in-law. But while the two are butchering their first ever dead body in Masako’s bathroom, the fourth friend in their factory clique gets a peek through the window, and Kuniko is enlisted to help with the disposal of the pieces with an offer of money to keep her from blabbing. The body bags have been divided into thirds, and are to be disposed of in different locations all over town. But the sloppy, lazy Kuniko’s bags are easily uncovered and identified, and soon the police show up asking questions. But the police are the least of their worries.

Satake, a calculating nightclub owner and pimp who has his own experience with dead bodies, is arrested for the murder. He is released because of lack of evidence, but he makes finding the killer of this man who stalked one of his girls priority one when he hits the streets. And he has a hunch about where to start looking first: at Kenji’s wife, Yayoi.

Out is one of those delicious domino-effect thrillers in the vein of Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, where a character’s action leads to an undesirable result, which must be dealt with by an even less sensible and more desperate action, and so on and so on and so on. Out is also a statement about Japan's patriarchal society and the mistreatment of female office and factory workers, and the few options they have for escaping their dreary, tired lives.

Body pieces that won’t stay buried; a wedding band that won't stay thrown away; a hidden key that won't stay submerged; children who know more than should; a loan shark with a tempting but messy business offer; a tenacious detective; and a man and woman who discover after it’s too late that they are more alike than they could ever imagine are the things that make Out the perfect page turner—or button clicker if you own an eReader.
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Feb 24, 2008 Mike Philbin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Masako Katori; Kuniko Jonouchi; Yoshie Azuma; Yayoi Yamamoto; who are these normal people? Well, they all work the night shift at the local boxed-lunch factory. From midnight until 6 a.m. every 'day' they prepare these meals for the office workers and commuters of downtown Tokyo. It's not much of a life but they work well as a team and they always snatch the best part of the conveyor belt; the easiest jobs, if you will.

These four unassuming women are the heroines of Natsuo Kirino's novel OUT, wi...more Masako Katori; Kuniko Jonouchi; Yoshie Azuma; Yayoi Yamamoto; who are these normal people? Well, they all work the night shift at the local boxed-lunch factory. From midnight until 6 a.m. every 'day' they prepare these meals for the office workers and commuters of downtown Tokyo. It's not much of a life but they work well as a team and they always snatch the best part of the conveyor belt; the easiest jobs, if you will.

These four unassuming women are the heroines of Natsuo Kirino's novel OUT, winner of Japan's top mystery prize and a 300,000 copies bestseller.

When you first begin reading this 500 page book, it seems a little slow - telling the tale of the charmless lives of these industrial monkeys as they fill their hours chucking ingredients into boxed lunches. They're an odd assortment of ages, these women, from an odd assortment of social and family backgrounds.

Masako's teenage son hasn't spoken to her in a year, neither has her husband. Kuniko is so far in debt, yet lives a life of apparent luxury. Yoshie has her ailing grandmother at home, nothing more than a cantankerous and grotesquely smelling baby. Yayoi has just killed her husband on the doorstep of their family home...

Yayoi Yamamoto panics and phones her work colleague Masako Katori and asks if she'll help dispose of the body. To her surprise (and eternal gratitude) Masako says, "No problem."

This is a weird book. You're happily thrumming along in the slow lane of its detailed domestic narrative and then someone throws a house brick onto your windscreen from a passing bridge. You swerve to regain control of the car but something's changed. You're no longer driving the same car. This feeling of metamorphosis continues to haunt the rest of the book and you're never certain what will happen next to whom and why. Yeah, I know that's the aim of most mystery-thriller books but this baby goes much deeper into the human psyche than it needs.

It's not just that there's a murder and there's a mystery involved. In fact, there's not much of a mystery involved. We know who did the murder and we know who's helping dispose of the body, all Yayoi's four most trusted work colleagues. 'Most trusted' might not be the right phrase - each of the four girls has a motive outside the purely charitable and this adds to the tension of will-they won't-they be found out.

Remember the way Columbo use to work? He'd be dogged like a pugnacious fox terrier never letting go of his suspect, grinding out every ounce of patience from his poor victims. Well, the two cops who arrive to investigate aren't in Columbo's league and they shouldn't be. This is a more down to earth story where the police don't always get their man. But the feeling you get from the book is of that absolute unending torture that Columbo brought with him. From before the first half of the book it is excruciatingly nerve-wracking.

The star of the book isn't the story or the characterisation, though the murder and Masako's helping dispose of the body are the focus of the narrative, it is the depth of motivation of each of the seven or so main characters that stands out. There's the seemingly above-board hostess club owner Satake, the flamboyantly-named debt collector Jumonji and the Brazilian immigrant worker Kazuo. You feel these people are really living and breathing in the swirling narrative as they batter like mad against the waves to keep their heads above water. Even the four girls have their own stories to tell while the real story chunters on beside them. It's a great complex read.

It's a sometimes gory book with dismemberment, rape and torture. The depiction of the weight of a dismembered human body and the problems of getting rid of how ever many doubled plastic bin liners worth of human garbage is especially well depicted.

The prolonged build up just piles on mental torture upon death threats and theatrical getaways. The final showdown itself is well worth the wait and you'll be gasping for breath long before you've realised how it's going to end. It sure is a strange ending for this genre of novel. Some might call it a down beat ending but that has never bothered this reviewer and because it has the guts of its conviction right up to the end
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Jul 04, 2007 Devin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Out marked my attempt to penetrate the world of crime fiction. I found it while browsing the bestsellers section of my local bookstore and picked it up mostly because of my interest in Japanese authors.

While I can't say it made me huge fan of the crime genre, I did find the book to have a cast of interesting characters- in particular Matsuko and Kuniko. Kuniko proved to be the most well developed (and, curiously enough, the most loathsome person even amongst rapists and murderers) character. At...more

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Mar 25, 2007 pinkgal rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: absolute-favorites, translations, her-voice

Read this book for the scene in the bento factory alone. Just do, and you'll never again eat a bento in Japan without thinking of it! This is the side of Japan the Japanese media never show! The Japanophiles with their obsession with tea ceremony, flower arrangement, anime, manga, samurai, ninja, clothing... this is yet another face of Japan and Natsuo Kirino does it wonderfully. Wage is low in a country that has some of the highest living standard costs in the world. The economy isn't kind to i...more

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Jun 12, 2007 Lucrecia rated it 4 of 5 stars

A gruesome, fascinating page-turner about working class Japanese women and their desperation. The insight into the characters' psyches is brilliant. I didn't particularly like the way it ended--I thought the way Masako ended up relating to Satake was a bit over the top and not so believable--and there were parts that were so gory I felt nauseous, but overall it was a very satisfying read. (Thanks, Jill!)

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Mar 22, 2007 spooky rated it 3 of 5 stars

this book was interesting on a national level, as well as a personal level. women doing a man's work for a lower price and incurring man's wrath. sexism in the work place, eastern style. the fixation on youth. and it was a fast, exciting read! the characters were relatable. i KNOW kuniko. the only part that lost me was the very end. if somebody can break this down for me i would make them 10 bento boxes.

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May 11, 2011 Becky rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library, mystery-and-thrillers, 2011, reviewed, challenge-1010

I wanted to like this one more than I actually did like it. The beginning of the story, learning about Yayoi, Yoshie, Masako, and Kuniko was interesting, and the death and immediate aftermath was interesting, but I just found myself losing interest shortly after that, and struggled to finish.

I think that this book would work for a lot of people, but I found it kind of disappointing. I found it hard to connect with these characters. I kept thinking how I would react and act and think differently...more

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May 28, 2007 Bernie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who adore Patricia Highsmith ("Ripley" series)

Shelves: mysterypsychologicalsuspense, favorites

Here is a gritty, compelling book about a Japanese woman who strangles her philandering husband, then recruits her co-workers at a factory to help her dispose of the body, and gets mired in a sea of lies upon lies. It reminded me of "Shallow Grave" in its darkness, and was a bit rough in the gruesome details - but utterly compelling.

Kirino is a much-heralded author in Japan, where they are fascinated by the dark side of life, and this novel won her the Grand Prix prize (Japan's top mystery prize...more

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Feb 15, 2010 BarkLessWagMore rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: disturbing, horror

This is a great book about a group of late shift female co-workers at a boxed lunch factory. It is extremely effective in portraying the desperation in their day to day lives and shows how even the most gruesome of deeds can become just another yucky job if the pay is good enough. It's so violent that, at times, it's almost funny and still very sad and frighteningly realistic as well. This was one of those impossible to put down books but it isn't for the faint of heart as it gets quite grisly.

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Sep 18, 2007 Anouilh rated it 4 of 5 stars

You'll never think of a bento box the same way again.

This book is a cool look into the minds of lots of characters, following the murder of an abusive husband and the attempts of four female lunch factory workers to "dispose" of the evidence. Level-headed Masako leads timid Yayoi, long-suffering Yoshie, and spoiled brat Kuniko in the cutting up and trashing of Yayoi's husband, a compulsive gambler. (Don't worry, I'm not spoiling anything.) After the police arrest the wrong person, the crime tear...more

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Jul 05, 2007 Angela rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who like FREAKY stuff

Shelves: japanese-authors

This book is full of amazingly WRONG situations and I thought it was amazing.

HOWEVER...

I may have thought it was amazing because I have lived in Japan for nearly three years and I felt like I could identify with the characters. I picked up on cultural subtleties that made me laugh and made me cringe. I rolled my eyes at Japanese women being Japanese women in the book and I cheered when they broke free from that mould - even though breaking free meant that they were ostracized from society and th...more

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Jul 29, 2007 Michael Klein rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: faves

What an awesomely dark tale of revenge and paranoia!! Kirino so vividly describes the desolation and the lives of her characters, there are passages still with me 2 years and many many books since.

I waited on pins and needles for her next English book - in fact, I think she is only the second author I ever hunted down through her publisher to request a warning shot when the new book was coming out.

And come to think of it, I think they forgot to tell me. But I did find out about her next one, Gro...more

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Jun 19, 2007 Deirdra rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: yes

For the most part I really enjoyed this book. The characters are not the typical characters you encounter in a novel. They work in the shadows of an underground economy. They include factory workers that work the overnight shift, debt collectors, gamblers, and your not so average house wife. The main character Masako is particularly interesting. The ending was a bit unsettling, but unique none the less. I would highly recommend this book, especially for those with a macabre sensibility.

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Aug 27, 2007 Leslie rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Out" is essentially warped pulp fiction from a woman's perspective, served up Asian-style. Woven into the incredible plot are three Japanese obsessions: food, sex, and dismemberment. Okay, so it's not Dostoevsky, but if you're depraved like I am, you'll definitely enjoy the graphic (and creative!) depictions of torture and mutilation. A weird, and not especially well-written, novel, but strangely satisfying, not unlike peeling skin after a bad sunburn.

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Sep 21, 2007 Isabelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Randomly bought in an airport... what a find! This is my first foray into the Japanese thriller world. The whole atmosphere was so entirely alien it made the story all the more disturbing. This is also a book about women who are not afraid of violence... also very disturbing.
I cannot wait to read another book by the author to see if she can duplicate the power and darkness of this novel.

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Oct 26, 2012 Nafiza rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, 2012, contemporary

It took me about three months to read this novel. For those who know my reading habits, you will be aware that I read fast. Inordinately fast, I am told. The reason for my lagging pace where this book is concerned was not because it was so bad I couldn’t make myself read it, it was because the novel was a bit too realistic, it sucked me in a bit too deeply – enough anyway that I had to put it down, recover and then resume reading. So from the synopsis you will know that four women work the night...more It took me about three months to read this novel. For those who know my reading habits, you will be aware that I read fast. Inordinately fast, I am told. The reason for my lagging pace where this book is concerned was not because it was so bad I couldn’t make myself read it, it was because the novel was a bit too realistic, it sucked me in a bit too deeply – enough anyway that I had to put it down, recover and then resume reading. So from the synopsis you will know that four women work the nightshift in a bento factory (bento = lunchboxes). One of them kills her husband and another steps up to help her get rid of the body.

Kirino has this particular ability to create relationships between women that are at once simple and profoundly complex. Masako, the so-called ringleader of this quartet of murderers, is a very complicated character. Actually, all of them are but Masako, perhaps, is more complex than any others, maybe because we spend the most time with her as readers. She has no obvious reason for helping Yayoi, who murders her husband after he throws away their savings on gambling and women. The other two women have financial reasons to help Masako get rid of the husband but Masako does not. That in particular is one of the most interesting part.

When the three women (Yayoi is told not to help so she can maintain her alibi) are cutting up the dead husband – those scenes are graphic and written with enough detail that they will pluck you out of your comfortable life and toss you into the wet and cold bathroom, with the tiles beneath your bare feet, the smell of blood in the air and a cut up corpse in front of your eyes. You will hear the wet sliding of the meat that was a man and you will smell the contents of his intestines. It is incredibly vivid and I had to stop reading for a long while.

The novel goes into the human psyche, the depravities humans are capable of and the dark desires that cannot find verbal expressions but more often than not are expressed in actions. There is Satake, the casino owner who is accused of killing the husband because of prior records which include murder of a woman – he swears revenge on these women, Masako in particular and the story takes another turn. If you go into this expecting a neat little resolution, you will be disappointed. It takes a labyrinthine approach to the ending, there is no neatness, no overtly moralistic tone that denounces murder, no punishment, nothing of that matter. This is a study of the human character and psyche but it is not all doom and gloom. It is incredibly profound. I thought I would despise the end and to an extent, it did leave me perplexed but it left me thinking, wondering…and the best books often do. Do I recommend this? I don’t know. You have to have certain tastes to read this and not many people I know do.(less)

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Mar 18, 2009 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is about women in Japan, living in robotic obligation towards their homes, families and workplaces. They are ignored by their husbands, mistreated by their own children and even dismissed by the police. But it's also one of the most brutal and visceral books I've ever read. Natsuo Kirino does not mess around. She could could Stephen King a real run for his money, and without any fantasy whatsoever. If you dig horror and suspense and a good story with good characters, this book is a mus...more

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Feb 17, 2009 Black Elephants rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I was very disturbed by this book, and its A Clockwork Orange take on the world. It starts out as a run-of-the-mill mystery wherein a wife kills her husband and her friends help her dismember the body. From there, Kirino takes the reader into a story about love—the Romeo and Juliet kind—and the modern person's search to penetrate a personal solitude that is created by their disappointment in society.

No one is fulfilled in this novel not even by death, and this comes no more clearly than through...more I was very disturbed by this book, and its A Clockwork Orange take on the world. It starts out as a run-of-the-mill mystery wherein a wife kills her husband and her friends help her dismember the body. From there, Kirino takes the reader into a story about love—the Romeo and Juliet kind—and the modern person's search to penetrate a personal solitude that is created by their disappointment in society.

No one is fulfilled in this novel not even by death, and this comes no more clearly than through Kirino's Romeo and Juliet: Satake and Masako. Satake is in love with Masako because he sees in her the same fire he killed 17 years earlier. As a youth, he tortured a woman to death in the most pure moment of ecstasy he's ever known and has yet to re-experience. That is until he meets Masako. By hating the woman, Satake can love her. By killing her, he can grow closer to her. By making love to her in her dying, he can penetrate all barriers that exist between humans. It's really twisted.

Masako is a middle-aged, broken down woman who finds herself anchoring her 3 friends in a murder cover-up. Her resourcefulness, which was never used at her job because intelligence in a woman is frightening, comes in handy. Unfortunately, it also eventually pushes her even farther from other human contact. But she's stubborn, hard and not shaken by the brutalities of this cold world, and to Satake, this makes her his mirror image to hate, deride, kill and love.

But that's only the end; god, the end was disturbing. Kirino, like many of the Japanese writers I've read, paints a bleak world where so many things—family, work, sex, death—is mechanical. The 4 women cut up corpses and throw them out with the trash. (It's what happens to every human being eventually, whether we like to think it or not.) In Kirino's modern world, women are toys, men are drones, foreigners are foreigners, and even the relationship between mother and children is broken. Masako's son won't speak to her. Yoshie's daughters use her, and Yayoi's children don't trust her. Youth seems to be the only protection from this disillusionment, but few of Japan's youth or those who appear young in Kirino's book, are uncorrupted, and in the end, it seems the only "good" character is of polluted blood (Japanese-Brazilian). There, he is automatically a derided outsider.

But what was most disturbing to me was how this murder novel was actually a love story in disguise. It is narrates a rite of passage for a character that has been trapped in the mire of despair and maybe might escape it despite the horrifying, inhuman costs. (Although, I started praying that nothing would happen to Masako despite what she's done.)

Also, I've only ever read two novels that have made me physically sick. One of them is Out, which goes into dismemberment, rape, physical abuse, murder and stalking. The other is Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, which contains a interesting description of a human being skinned alive.

To the ignorant: Japan is not all about the wide-eye magical, manga girls.

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Apr 24, 2008 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Japanese novelists, known for mastering the art of human suffering with razor sharp subtlety (think Mishima's "Temple of the Golden Pavilion"), share the literary blade with writers who have modernized this "quiet brutality" which is so omnipresent in Japanese literature. Kirino's crime fiction novel "Out" entices with unsentimental murder and dismemberment (hey, if that's your thing), female backlash grounded in the fertile soil of Man's vices and the snare of classic dramatic irony. The reader...more

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Jul 02, 2008 Valerie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: cast-iron stomachs

Recommended to Valerie by: Kat, PrimeTime

Shelves: contemporary-lit, 2006-2008-singapore

Out contains some truly gruesome passages, and having finished it quickly, I was trying to decide whether I was more affected by the bloody bits or by the banal--but nevertheless gruesome--bits regarding everyday life in Japan. But as the days go by, I find my memory of the gruesome passages has faded almost entirely and I'm left with feeling depressed by the despairing conditions she depicts of everyday life under capitalism.

That's right--everyone else will talk about the gender relations held...more Out contains some truly gruesome passages, and having finished it quickly, I was trying to decide whether I was more affected by the bloody bits or by the banal--but nevertheless gruesome--bits regarding everyday life in Japan. But as the days go by, I find my memory of the gruesome passages has faded almost entirely and I'm left with feeling depressed by the despairing conditions she depicts of everyday life under capitalism.

That's right--everyone else will talk about the gender relations held up to brittle commentary in this book--as they should. I have nothing more to add to that useful discussion. Nor am I invested in the specifically Japanese aspects of the book--in fact, the two Kirino novels I've read have widely-applicable themes. So my attention is fixed elsewhere--on Kirino's dissection of the economic relations that govern and confine her character's lives, and set the plot in motion.

So draining is everyday life for these characters--trapped in soul-deadening jobs for the sake of money (and small amounts of it), trapped, too, in suffocating family and marital obligations, and trapped--though this is more of a choice--by the promises of consumer culture--that, indeed, these portions of the book outweigh for me the murders, rapes, and corpse dissections.

The Skipper's life is one I wouldn't want under any circumstances. But of all the stories, the one that leaves me most saddened is Masako's. A family of three, they are strangers to one another. Both the mother and the son have suffered failures in school and work, and the father seems deeply bored by life. But the family, no refuge from the cruel world, seems to have internalized the dynamics and critiques of Japanese social and economic life: fail in one sphere, fail in them all. In this way, the mythology of the family as a nurturing unit under capitalism is exposed for its nature as a mere vehicle for capitalism's efficient operations. Having failed to produce good workers/performers for the system, the family ceases to function, too. The Skipper's family suffers similarly: the state's failure to protect a widowed mother with an elderly bed-ridden dependent means the children see no reason to stay, as this home fails to provide the means for success--only for mere survival.

All affective relations are damaged in the world of the book, and the only two characters capable of deep feelings for others are the foreigner and the psychopath. (One other potentially rich friendship turns out to be staged by one party.)

Kirino massages one theme I quite like: that of the value of self-knowledge. Characters who lack self-knowledge suffer more than those who strive to understand themselves. Though I must say that given the life conditions she establishes for each character, this lesson seems cruel, as most characters comprehend their economic situation--and gendered incarceration--accurately. Thus their inability to understand themselves seems small potatoes in the face of their inability to transform their lives--since self-knowledge cannot, of course, change structural conditions. (less)

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Nov 11, 2007 Katie rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No One

Although this book is the same genre as many books I've enjoyed, I found it to be terribly boring. Since it was an award-winner in Japan, I'm betting the laborous writing style was more a product of the translation than the writing itself. In other words, the writing in the original Japanese was probably very well done, and the translator did his job of putting it into readable English, but it didn't flow as well as novels written in English. The words may have been a correct translation, but th...more

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Feb 05, 2008 Preeta rated it 2 of 5 stars

What a disappointing ending! At first, I was absolutely entralled by the characters and their various relationships. The first 3/4ths of the book are filled with so much texture - it felt like I was running my hands through a fabric store. Most intriguing are the female-female relationships ranging from trust to need to fear. How I hated Kuniko! How I rooted for Masako!

And then, this whole S&M dark and violent erotic stuff comes out, which threw the entire book in downward-spiral away from n...more

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Oct 15, 2007 Nicole Miller rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookclub

A Japanese suspense/mystery. Boy. Quite different than any American suspense/mystery I've read (which, granted, aren't many). I was surprised at the graphic nature of it, more so because it was written by a Japanese woman--it just seems so against the stereotype that we are made to believe in. I also found it hard to get involved in any of the characters--I didn't feel one way or another towards them. I don't know if it is the translation aspect or just this style of writing, but it was very non...more

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Apr 25, 2010 ☮Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Unlike anything I've ever read before, and I almost stopped reading it at a few points. First, the opening chapters were hard to follow with all the foreign names and descriptions of their boring job and boring lives. But when that's all over, things get really interesting, intense, and downright shocking at times. The beginning just sets it all up so you have an understanding of why these people acted like they did later on after one of the 4 female "friends" impulsively strangles her husband a...more

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Jul 04, 2010 Julie (73) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, a-z-challenge

I enjoyed this and wish I hadn't left it on my TBR pile for so long. Certainly not for the faint-hearted but a good, gripping read.

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Dec 30, 2011 Naomi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Although this book was well written, I swear that the only two Japanese mysteries I have read have had almost identical storylines!! :/ I would continue on with them as I do enjoy them and, again, they are well written..hopefully once I expand my horizons of Japanese literature, so will their storylines!

1 like · like · see review

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The WTF? Book Club: Out - Natsuo Kirino (December Book Selection)	3	23	Feb 09, 2013 01:54pm
Goodreads Librari...: Author's name spelled differently on different language publications	3	184	Oct 12, 2012 07:30am
Goodreads Italia: Le quattro casalinghe di Tokyo di Natsuo Kirino - Commenti e discussione	103	81	Jul 22, 2012 07:28am
Around the World ...: Gaeta recommends Out	6	31	Nov 22, 2011 05:21am
Japanese Literature: Out (アウト)	6	39	Oct 27, 2011 11:06am
Constant Reader	1	38	Nov 03, 2008 04:05am
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Mystery

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Mystery > Crime

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Asian Literature > Japanese Literature

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Cultural > Asia

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About Natsuo Kirino

NATSUO KIRINO, born in 1951 in Kanazawa (Ishikawa Prefecture) was an active and spirited child brought up between her two brothers, one being six years older and the other five years younger than her. Kirino's father, being an architect, took the family to many cities, and Kirino spent her youth in Sendai, Sapporo, and finally settled in Tokyo when she was fourteen, which is where she has been res...more

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Quotes from Out

“When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth underneath; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world.” — 4 people liked it

“The woman had gasped beneath his heavy body. He rubbed against her, lubricated by the warm, sticky liquid, but as her body gradually grew cold, he felt as though they'd been glued together. She seemed to be see-sawing between agony and ecstasy, but finally Satake pressed his lips over hers to quiet the groans-of pain or pleasure-that were leaking from her mouth. He found the hole that he had made in her side and worked his finger deep into the opening. Blood was pumping from the wound, staining their sex a gruesome crimson. He wanted to get further inside, to melt into her. As he was about to come, he pulled his lips from her and she whispered in his ear: "I'm finished . . . finished."
"I know," he'd said, and he could still hear the exact sound of his own voice.” — 2 people liked it

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