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OUT 上
深夜の弁当工場で働く主婦たちは、それぞれの胸の内に得体の知れない不安と失望を抱えていた。「こんな暮らしから脱け出したい」そう心中で叫ぶ彼女たちの生活を外へと導いたのは、思いもよらぬ事件だった。なぜ彼女たちは、パート仲間が殺した夫の死体をバラバラにして捨てたのか?犯罪小説の到達点。’98年日本推理作家協会賞受賞。
456 pages, Paperback
Published June 14, 2002
7 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Natsuo Kirino
96 books2,807 followersNATSUO KIRINO (桐野夏生), 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 residing since. Kirino showed glimpses of her talent as a writer in her early stages—she was a child with great deal of curiosity, and also a child who could completely immerse herself in her own unique world of imagination.
After completing her law degree, Kirino worked in various fields before becoming a fictional writer; including scheduling and organizing films to be shown in a movie theater, and working as an editor and writer for a magazine publication. She got married to her present husband when she turned twenty-four, and began writing professionally, after giving birth to her daughter, at age thirty. However, it was not until Kirino was forty-one that she made her major debut. Since then, she has written thirteen full-length novels and three volumes of collective short stories, which are highly acclaimed for her intriguingly intelligent plot development and character portrayal, and her unique perspective of Japanese society after the collapse of the economic bubble.
Today, Kirino continues to enthusiastically write in a range of interesting genres. Her smash hit novel OUT (Kodansha, 1997) became the first work to be translated into English and other languages. OUT was also nominated for the 2004 MWA Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Novel Category, which made Kirino the first Japanese writer to be nominated for this major literary award. Her other works are now under way to be translated and published around the world.
After completing her law degree, Kirino worked in various fields before becoming a fictional writer; including scheduling and organizing films to be shown in a movie theater, and working as an editor and writer for a magazine publication. She got married to her present husband when she turned twenty-four, and began writing professionally, after giving birth to her daughter, at age thirty. However, it was not until Kirino was forty-one that she made her major debut. Since then, she has written thirteen full-length novels and three volumes of collective short stories, which are highly acclaimed for her intriguingly intelligent plot development and character portrayal, and her unique perspective of Japanese society after the collapse of the economic bubble.
Today, Kirino continues to enthusiastically write in a range of interesting genres. Her smash hit novel OUT (Kodansha, 1997) became the first work to be translated into English and other languages. OUT was also nominated for the 2004 MWA Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Novel Category, which made Kirino the first Japanese writer to be nominated for this major literary award. Her other works are now under way to be translated and published around the world.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 30, 2026
deel 1 van deze crimi. niet denderend maar ik ben toch benieuwd naar deel 2
June 25, 2021
Mucho drama, mucho chisme, mucha tensión, me encanto demasiado, sin duda me dan ganas de seguir leyendo a Natsuo
April 9, 2010
this murder mystery/thriller is mammoth (450 pages for part 1 and 340 pages for part 2). i was really leery when i first started reading it (stereotypical depictions of ethnic minorities = do not want!), but then ended up being pleasantly surprised; it turns out that the characters are at least given the right to speak in their own voices, however problematically. i am very, very curious about how she's going to incorporate these figures into the grand finale.
one FANTASTIC thing about the book is the character of masako, who is one of the strangest (and strangely sympathetic) characters i have encountered in a long time. oh man is she awesome. i like how she can so expertly analyze the degrading, bitterly unequal conditions of labor for her and her (shufu, over-40, shackled-with-kids) peers and yet not be simply reduced to those conditions or act as a kind of simplified protest stand-in. it's much more complicated than that, and i think it's brilliant of kirino natsuo to highlight these issues through a good old-fashioned murder mystery. WHICH is actually not so old-fashioned - as part 2 reveals!
it really took me about 300 pages to get excited about the book, but it was definitely worth it. the plot twists that start developing right at the end of part 1 are a DOOZY. and part 2 is currently making me sit on my edge with delicious suspense.
one FANTASTIC thing about the book is the character of masako, who is one of the strangest (and strangely sympathetic) characters i have encountered in a long time. oh man is she awesome. i like how she can so expertly analyze the degrading, bitterly unequal conditions of labor for her and her (shufu, over-40, shackled-with-kids) peers and yet not be simply reduced to those conditions or act as a kind of simplified protest stand-in. it's much more complicated than that, and i think it's brilliant of kirino natsuo to highlight these issues through a good old-fashioned murder mystery. WHICH is actually not so old-fashioned - as part 2 reveals!
it really took me about 300 pages to get excited about the book, but it was definitely worth it. the plot twists that start developing right at the end of part 1 are a DOOZY. and part 2 is currently making me sit on my edge with delicious suspense.
June 7, 2024
4.25🌟 rounded to 4🌟
I support women's wrongs✊🏾 Also this book reminds me of Exhuma in the way that there's a storyline and you thought you know what the main plot is all about and then halfway through SIKE! there's actually a bigger plot all along except now the stakes and tension are somehow even higher than before.
Anyways I really enjoyed reading (most of) this. I thought it's really compulsively readable. Except for the very last part. idk what that was. idk how to interpret that, what the author wants to say etc. I am confusion.
I saw at least a couple Brazilians or reviewers who understands Portuguese were annoyed with the translation in this book so just wanna point that out.
One last thing is that so many reviews were like "This book is so uniquely Japanese!" "The issues tackled are so particular in Japan" etc. and it's giving,,,,fetishization. Because wdym? Women & immigrants being treated as second class citizen happens in other countries too, nosy neighbours are very common occurrences, pedophiles exist outside of Japan etc. these are not exclusively Japan's problems🧐
I support women's wrongs✊🏾 Also this book reminds me of Exhuma in the way that there's a storyline and you thought you know what the main plot is all about and then halfway through SIKE! there's actually a bigger plot all along except now the stakes and tension are somehow even higher than before.
Anyways I really enjoyed reading (most of) this. I thought it's really compulsively readable. Except for the very last part. idk what that was. idk how to interpret that, what the author wants to say etc. I am confusion.
I saw at least a couple Brazilians or reviewers who understands Portuguese were annoyed with the translation in this book so just wanna point that out.
One last thing is that so many reviews were like "This book is so uniquely Japanese!" "The issues tackled are so particular in Japan" etc. and it's giving,,,,fetishization. Because wdym? Women & immigrants being treated as second class citizen happens in other countries too, nosy neighbours are very common occurrences, pedophiles exist outside of Japan etc. these are not exclusively Japan's problems🧐
January 16, 2016
Good story so far, but a bit of a slog to read. I like the premise of the novel and am looking forward to learning how things play out in the second half. However, I found the frequent shifting of perspective among the large cast of characters jarring and sometimes repetitive. I also could have done with fewer descriptions of the light at sunset and fewer lengthy expositions of characters' backgrounds. I prefer a fleeter writer like Keigo Higashino when it comes to mysteries and crime novels, but this book has its moments.
May 30, 2023
Me mantuvo en suspenso por mucho tiempo, deslumbrando un desenlace que nunca llegó, cada giro en la trama me sorprendía más, es el primer libro que leo de Natsuo Kirino, y definitivamente no será el último
August 20, 2024
includes 下巻
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews