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May 15, 2011

James rated it:

Few books start with a crackerjack opening; Lolita, Anna Karenina, The Journalist and the Murderer
and Tale of Two Cities are the only other ones I know of. This is the 5th.

And for a while she reuses the opening idea when other characters are introduced. An innovative technique.

I think this book went over the heads of most readers;
almost everything in the book is either a lie or a delusion.
For readers that "willingly suspend disbelief" More...

4 comments like (22 people liked it)

Aug 26, 2008

NYLSpublishing rated it:

Recently, in a coffee shop near my home, I overheard one teenage boy intimating to another that if he were to ever marry it would not be to an American woman but a Japanese one because, “… they’re pretty, submissive, and just plain happy to be women.” Noting that more than a few eyelids batted at this exclamation, I wondered how these American teenagers happened upon their conclusions.

Kirino’s Grotesque is a tale of two sisters growing up in Japan. Yuriko, the youngest of the p More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Mar 14, 2008

Yulia rated it:

(3.75) The other reviews can reveal what this book is about. What I wanted to share is the extreme responses this book incited in my boyfriend and me. He alternately found himself loving the narrator, Yuriko's sister, for her brutal honesty and hating her for her malice and psychological bullying of Kazue. Meanwhile, I found myself rooting the narrator on as she spoke the cruel truth about the pitiful hopelessness of Kazue's meritocratic dreams, but a moment later I wondered if that made me a bu More...

6 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Radhika rated it:

Natsuo Kirino is an impressive author. She has the power to really portray characters so vividly that I felt them get under my skin. I found myself detesting a character as if she was real. I found myself wrinkling my nose in distaste, hating some stupid things a person would keep doing, their blindness... I had to stop and remind myself that this was fiction and yet, time and again, Natsuo would draw me in. This is a rare gift and one that Natsuo employs to astounding results in this book. More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Frank rated it:

Like most the books I bloody read, I wished I'd reviewed it immediately afterwards, but hey, I wasn't even on this site. But it must say something that I was able to review Natsuo's precursor "Out" with no problems because it was so bleedin' phenomenal. This too, is a great albeit flawed read. The narrative is not as clean - intentionally as I recall and when it works it's wonderful, when it doesn't it makes you yearn for the 5th star that could have been.

One other issue - More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2009

Isabelle rated it:

While I had loved "Out", I was interested but certainly not enthralled by "Grotesque".
Through recollections, confessions and diaries, we follow the destinies of 4 Japanese girls who meet in an exclusive Junior High School and drift apart through adulthood only to be reunited in the end through a trail of murders and sexual crimes. While one of those girls, the most brilliant and driven, gravitates towards terrorism and finds redemption through love, the other three, all More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 01, 2008

Izlinda rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 25, 2008

David rated it:

I loved Kirino's "Out," so when I saw this at the bookstore, I grabbed it immediately.

"Grotesque" is an apt title. Essentially, "Grotesque" is about hatred and confusion, richly illustrated with stories ranging from murder to incest -- I imagine Kirino's angry finger pointing at some of society's most obvious ills (mass consumerism, the idolotry of youth, pointless competition, misogyny.) All of which lead to her characters' transformations into grotesq More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 26, 2008

Jessica rated it:

I loved the author's earlier book, OUT, an incredibly compelling, as well as impossibly horrific & beautiful (if a bit too wild and implausible at the very end), novel. GROTESQUE is not as masterful although it is compelling in its own way. In this novel, Natsuo Kirino also deals with the lives of women in contemporary Japanese society, here through the lens of a cut-throat competitive educational system, the Q High School for Young Women. The principal narrator is a "half" (only half- More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 24, 2008

Mike rated it:

A Testimony Of Several.

English-language marketing folk always get it wrong with Japanese fiction. They always have to call it a 'murder mystery' or a 'thriller', respectively describing the 'genre' of Kirino's two books in English GROTESUQUE and OUT.

Well, they may have been closer with OUT, it was thrilling-ish but a better term might have been the invented sub-genre RELENTLESS.

And that's how this latest book is. Though for different reasons. Talk about losing More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 14, 2010

Marvin rated it:

a complex tale of class discrimination and sexual inequality. Natsuo Kirino may be the most socially astute of the current Japanese writers. She criticizes many things about Japanese culture; the role of women, the unfairness of the competitive school system, among others. She writes how this dehumanizes the participant, especially women. She does this in a harrowing tale of three women told by the older sister of a murdered prostitute. The story proceeds Rashomon style, narrated by the sister b More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2008

Laura rated it:

This book didn't hook me as completely as Kirino's first English-translated book, Out. She's a masterful writer, though, so I was eventually pulled in. I love the way she weaves together her stories, taking you from one character to the next, leaving you wanting more in one part and then giving it to you later on (usually from the perspective of another character, which only makes it more interesting).

I related to a lot in this book. The bitterness of Yuriko's older sister, growin More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 22, 2007

Maggie rated it:

This book is a like a train wreck. Each character is more broken, more vindictive, more reprehensible than the next, and yet you cannot turn away. Set in contemporary Japan, this is the story of four women linked by blood, by a prestigious school system, and by prostitution. Though appearing exceptionally beautiful or intelligent on the outside, each harbors their own particular perversion, their own inner malice or ugliness that they use as a form of armor from an increasingly disappointing More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2011

Mely rated it:

Fantastic and very disturbing feminist noir about the pressures on four women who were once classmates at a prestigious Japanese high school: the unnamed narrator of most of the book, half-Japanese and half-white, who hates and is profoundly jealous of her monstrously beautiful sister, Yuriko; Yuriko, whose beauty attracts more attention than she can handle, leading her to modeling and prostitution both glamorous and seedy; Mitsuru, perfectly balanced and somehow lacking; and Kazue, smart but no More...

0 comments like

Nov 23, 2008

C(h)ristine rated it:

Spotted this book at a Borders in Ann Arbor, remembered that Junot Diaz once said he liked a novel by Kirino, and bought it. Six months later, I crack open the book…

I’m not sure why this book was as long as it is–the storyline itself is not that epic or groundbreaking, even though the premise (the narrator’s sister and high school classmate are murdered…) is intriguing. And the ending? Total let down.

But but but! The book did take risks in other areas, to great succes More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 18, 2012

Alkatraz rated it:

This is the first novel by this author that I have read and I was left feeling unsure about the book as a whole. Written in Japanese surrealist style, the novel follows one woman through her life and how she reacts to a world where she is merely average yet her younger sister is a monstrous beauty. The focus is on the time spent in high school and then middle age.

When her sister and a school mate are both murdered, the unnamed protagonist goes back through her memory and explores the p More...

0 comments like

Dec 31, 2011

Kristin rated it:

The book was difficult to put down, but not fulfilling. On the plus side, it is filled with sex and prostitution. On the negative side,it is brutally bitter. The New York Times review called the incessant and intense hatred of the narrator was like staring too long at an unshaded lightbulb.

The story is about two women who were school mates at a prestigious all-girl's high school. Both later become prostitutes and are murdered. The story is narrated by the younger sister of one of More...

0 comments like

Dec 05, 2011

Ira rated it:

Natsuo Kirino mungkin seorang feminis atau entahlah pendukung gerakan feminis atau bagaimana. Themanya mungkin biasa-biasa saja tentang pelacur yang mati dibunuh. tapi kemampuan narasi berceritanya patut diacungi jempol.

Hampir semua tokoh di dalam novelnya ini adalah orang-orang yang tidak jujur dengan dirinya sendiri. Pembaca jadi bingung mana yang benar-benar real dan mana yang hanya hayalan. setiap tokohnya ingin diterima pembaca sebagai orang baik-baik bagaimanapun busuknya merek More...

0 comments like

Aug 08, 2011

Rosemary rated it:

Told through a series of memories, letters, confessions and diaries - that you feel you really shouldn't be looking at - this book lives up to its name; Grotesque.

Natsuo Kirino has a gift at making you enter each one of the character's minds, whether you want to or not! I couldn't put it down, it feels like you are being told the juiciest gossip story ever, along the lines of 'you never guess what happened to them?!' - but much, much darker and more disturbing of course.

The novel doesn't let up More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Derek rated it:

A series of very unreliable narrators describe how a Chinese man living illegally in Tokyo becomes fatally intertwined with two women working as prostitutes.

This has some very nice touches but the idea of using different narrative techniques means that the momentum shifts at times that are not always in the best interests of the story. (That's a polite way of saying that some of the sections dragged!)

The best sections, early on, described the schooldays of most of the principal characters and w More...

0 comments like

Jan 20, 2011

Clint rated it:

I was going to give this book 2 stars until about halfway through it because the characters were completely unbelievable in their complexity (junior high students don't talk like that to each other, decadent French authors do), and there was something really wrong with the main character directly addressing the reader, and there was something really wrong with the translation. I can't imagine the author writing in Jap for a Jap audience would need to explain what natto is. However, by about ha More...

0 comments like

Jan 16, 2011

Chris rated it:

I do my laundry at the neighboring apartment complex, and someone had left a stack books next to the washers with a sign reading "Free." I picked up this book as I thought it might be some sort of murder mystery.

Instead it was a "Catcher in the Rye" meets "Lolita" psychological study of four girls attending an elite academy in Tokyo. I'd hate to think that even a smidgen of this reflects the actual experience of school in Japan.

Imagine a More...

0 comments like

Aug 12, 2010

Judy rated it:

Grotesque is an exploration of many things. Japanese society, coming of age and also the yearnings / struggles of privileged women. I should probably mention that I read the Chinese translation of this book, and also that I didn't end up finishing the book.

I thought the book was long, drawn out and tedious. The book revolves around a girl of mixed heritage (Yuriko) who is beautiful to the point of unnatural, like she should not even exist on this earth. The girl's older sister is th More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2010

Sophia rated it:

Grotesque is a riveting, razor-sharp indictment of societal and gender roles in modern Japan delivered through three vivid first-hand accounts. Two aging streetwalkers are brutally murdered; they were both students at the prestigious Q High School for Young Women in Tokyo. Stitched together by their diaries, depositions and the "overall" narrator--the plain, unnamed older sister of the once monstrously beautiful prostitute Yuriko--Natsuo Kirino sheds light on a universe of painful soli More...

0 comments like

Aug 30, 2009

Brian rated it:

A very strange and disturbing book, but it was a book that I couldn't put down. In some ways, it was similar to Steinbeck's East of Eden. There is a struggle between two siblings for the attention of parents and later for success in the world. However, the siblings are sisters and their concerns are more with their attractiveness, which I think Kirino is aiming to criticize about the treatment of Japanese women. Kirino uses multiple perspectives to tell her story, much like Out. However, unlike More...

0 comments like

Aug 09, 2009

emily rated it:

at least it's ambitious.

along with one enormously unreliable narrator, we also get significant sections written by (at least) four other characters, each of whom have a different story to tell us. however, none of them are compelling enough narrators to actually make me care who's telling the truth or, more to the point, whose lies are the most interesting and least damning.

zhang's narrative is far and away the most interesting, which is hardly saying anything, since the More...

0 comments like

Jul 12, 2011

Pikachu rated it:

If anyone ever needs proof that stereotypes are harmful, they can pick up a copy of Natsuo Kirino's book: Grotesque. The plot revolves around the two Hirata sisters born from an interracial marriage. Yukiro is so beautiful that some regard her as monstrous. She isn't very academic, but has a lot of street smarts. The older sister, whose name is never revealed, is intelligent but very ugly. Various circumstances cause them both to be enrolled at the prestigious "Q School."

Grot More...

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Mar 05, 2009

Venessa rated it:

Grotesque was in the mystery section of the library, and while there is a mystery going on within its plot, its less about that than the psychological grotesqueness of human beings. I agree with the dust jacket's description of this book being "classic noir" and if I were to give it a label? Surreal.

Disturbing. Intense. Vivid. Graphic. Difficult to read at times. But you keep going because you need to know. In short, a masterful piece of literature. I neglected my sleep and More...

3 comments like

Jun 19, 2010

Danielle rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Mar 08, 2011

Claire rated it:

I admired the offbeat use of an unreliable narrator in this book; older sister of beautiful Yuriko recounts their relationship (and others) in the lead-up to Yuriko's murder. She is malicious, distant and cold, rendering her account completely biased and therefore untrustworthy. In Grotesque, Kirino is concerned with painting a vicious, harsh picture of life for women in modern Japan, but to be honest, I felt that this agenda overpowered her narrative and writing. She includes the perspectives o More...

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