Novels
- Out (2003)
- Grotesque (2007)
- Real World (2008)
- In (2016)
Non fiction
- Love Hotels (2006)
Novels Book Covers
Non fiction Book Covers
Natsuo Kirino Books Overview
Out
Nothing in the sometimes hazy history of Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension filled, plot driven realism of Natsuo Kirino’s award winning mystery OUT, a work that took the Japanese literary scene by storm and continues to haunt the popular consciousness as a recently released major motion picture. Kirino’s novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo Suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her dead beat husband and then seeks the help of her co workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The ringleader of this cover up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of OUT and as one of the shrewdest, most clear eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako’s own search for a way OUT of the straitjacket of a dead end life leads her, too, to take drastic action. The complex yet riveting narrative seamlessly combines a convincing glimpse into the grimy world of Japan’s yakuza with a brilliant portrayal of the psychology of a violent crime and the ensuing game of cat and mouse between seasoned detectives and a group of determined but inexperienced criminals. Kirino has mastered a ‘Thelma and Louise’ kind of graveyard humor that illuminates her stunning evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds and the friendship that bolsters them in the aftermath. OUT shows its author to be Japan’s finest mystery writer as well as one of the most astute observers of contemporary society, revealing, in the course of its gripping pages, the fears, hopes, and obsessions that drive a complex country.
Grotesque
Natsuo Kirino made a spectacular fiction debut on these shores with the publication of Edgar Award nominated Out Daring and disturbing…
Prepared to push the limits of this world…
Remarkable Los Angeles Times. Unanimously lauded for her unique, psychologically complex, darkly compelling vision and voice, she garnered a multitude of enthusiastic fans eager for more.
In her riveting new novel Grotesque, Kirino once again depicts a barely known Japan. This is the story of three Japanese women and the interconnectedness of beauty and cruelty, sex and violence, ugliness and ambition in their lives.
Tokyo prostitutes Yuriko and Kazue have been brutally murdered, their deaths leaving a wake of unanswered questions about who they were, who their murderer is, and how their lives came to this end. As their stories unfurl in an ingeniously layered narrative, coolly mediated by Yuriko’s older sister, we are taken back to their time in a prestigious girls high school where a strict social hierarchy decided their fates and follow them through the years as they struggle against rigid societal conventions.
Shedding light on the most hidden precincts of Japanese society today, Grotesque is both a psychological investigation into the female psyche and a classic work of noir fiction. It is a stunning novel, a book that confirms Natsuo Kirino s electrifying gifts.
Real World
A stunning new work of the feminist noir that Natsuo Kirino defined and made her own in her novels Out and Grotesque. In a crowded residential suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer and endless cram school sessions meant to ensure entry into good colleges. There’s Toshi, the dependable one; Terauchi, the great student; Yuzan, the sad one, grieving over the death of her mother and trying to hide her sexual orientation from her friends; and Kirarin, the sweet one, whose late nights and reckless behavior remain a secret from those around her. When Toshi s next door neighbor is found brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor s son, a high school boy they nickname Worm. But when he flees, taking Toshi s bike and cell phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of dangers dangers they never could have even imagined that rises from within them as well as from the world around them. Psychologically intricate and astute, dark and unflinching, Real World is a searing, eye opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before.
Love Hotels
Sex creates odd cultural conventions everywhere, but nowhere has an institution quite like the Japanese love hotel. To be rented by the hour for amorous liaisons, the theme rooms revealed in this provocative collection of photographs are steeped in fantasy, their elaborate d cor ranging from simulated subway cars to religious bondage with much kink in between. These brash rooms are fascinating in themselves, but also present a window into a very classified aspect of this society. The foreword by best selling author Natsuo Kirino and passages from hotel guest books lend humor and context to these 80 haunting room portraits, creating an astonishing document of sex and romance, public and private space in Japan.
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