From the Bookshelf of Point Blank…

Out

Natsuo Kirino

Start date: November 24, 2019

Finish date: January 1, 2020

Discussion: Featured Novels

Why we're reading this: The latest stop in the world tour!
[close] The latest stop in the world tour!

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What Members Thought

Mar 10, 2020 Melki rated it really liked it

Shelves: crime-fiction, best-of-2020

You know how sometimes you answer a phone call, and suddenly . . . your life is changed forever.

"What's up? Are you taking the night off?"
"No, I just don't know what to do."
"About what?" She sounded genuinely concerned. "Has something happened?"
"It has." She might as well get it over with. "I've killed him."

Three Tokyo factory workers get sucked into the proverbial web of lies and deceit when they help a fellow employee dispose of the body of her murdered husband. The author goes into a disturb ...more

56 likes · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2019 Jake rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mystery-thriller-crime

Rarely am I able to describe books in one word but I can do so with Out: kaleidoscopic.

Natsuo Kirino is a popular writer in Japan and I’ve wanted to get into her work for some time. Personally, I had wanted to start with Grotesque but I saw this at a bookstore for a reasonable price and figured What the heck?

Well sometimes fate deals you quite a hand. Coincidentally, this is a major theme in Out: how the actions and behaviors of others impact people. We’ll get to that. But first, I must lavish N Rarely am I able to describe books in one word but I can do so with Out: kaleidoscopic.

Natsuo Kirino is a popular writer in Japan and I’ve wanted to get into her work for some time. Personally, I had wanted to start with Grotesque but I saw this at a bookstore for a reasonable price and figured What the heck?

Well sometimes fate deals you quite a hand. Coincidentally, this is a major theme in Out: how the actions and behaviors of others impact people. We’ll get to that. But first, I must lavish Natsuo Kirino with Hosannas for her characters. What great characters! She gives them so much depth and detail (without shading into the glorification of banality as is the custom of some writers) that I felt their lives, their pain, their struggles, their greed in a visceral way. None of them are sympathetic but neither are they merely evil. You can empathize with most of them (except the murder victim really) because of their circumstances, even if they make decisions that are bad or worse.

Along the way, it’s evident the writer is saying something about Japanese society writ large, particularly how it treats women. How these four women wind up working the night shift in a dumpy, depressing box factory doing hard labor filled me with sadness. And it’s impressive when a writer can do this without it feeling didactic. The ability to show but not tell is a special one and Natsuo Kirino has it.

I made it a point to learn as little about this book as possible going in so I could be surprised by the story. And I was. But what I was also surprised about was how these characters kept being drawn to one another through the fate of circumstance and how perceptions affect people’s actions. Some of these connections felt slightly contrived but I didn’t really care. Whenever I thought I knew the writer was going with this, she jerked me in another direction. I never got a full handle on this book until the last page.

This is a thrilling read that manages to be both deep and suspenseful. ...more

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Jul 28, 2019 Joe Nicholl rated it it was amazing

Killer Japanese noir-crime fiction! Murder in the lower class burbs leads four female work-mates on a very, very dark journey...Very intense...many characters but each fully fleshed out...Very well written; each chapter takes the pov of that focused character (only in the third person)...I started to question the ending, but I realized this was a Japanese novel, and it ends as such (I won't spoil)...One Point: This book is 400 pgs long, but reads as if it was twice as long! It's very, very dense ...more

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Mar 15, 2020 Lawrence rated it really liked it

Shelves: noir-pulp-fiction

The husband is murdered (he deserves it), but the wife now thinks "what do I do with the body?" She phones a female factory co-worker who sets the ball in motion employing other co-workers to dispense with the body. That is not the only crime here. We are visited with stalkers, loan sharks and other undesirables.

Out is a gritty modern noir set in Japan where most of the activity seems to take place at night and each of the main characters has had their dreams dashed. The author Natsuo Kirino pat ...more

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Oct 06, 2019 Justin rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2019, point-blank, read-in-oct-2019

3.5, actually.

The first 100 pages: plodding.
The middle 250 pages: highly enjoyable
The last 50 pages: ugh.

If you do not like reading graphic rape scenes, avoid this book.

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