Out (novel)
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| Author | Natsuo Kirino |
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| Translator | Stephen Snyder |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | English, originally Japanese |
| Genre(s) | Crime / Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Vintage |
| Released | September 30 2004 |
| Media type | Print Paperback) |
| Pages | 388 (paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0099472287 |
Out is a crime-fiction novel written by Japanese author Natsuo Kirino. It is her first novel to be published in the English language. The book is currently published by Vintage, part of Random House, in Britain and has been translated into English by Stephen Snyder.
[edit] Overview
The novel tells the tales of four women, working the graveyard shift at a Japanese boxed-lunch factory. All four women live hard lives and even harder family lives. Masako, accepted as the leader of the four women, feels completely alienated from her estranged husband and teenage son. Kuniko, a plump and rather vain girl, has recently been ditched by her boyfriend after the couple were driven into debt after making several loans, leaving Kuniko to fend off the loan shark and the Yakuza. Yoshie is a single mother of two and reluctant caretaker of her mother-in-law, who was left partly paralyzed after a stroke. Yayoi is a thirty-four-year old mother of two small boys. She hates to leave her children home alone to go to work. More than that, she hates the thought of her drunken, gambling husband returning home and hurting them or, more likely, herself.
Yayoi goes home one night, unaware of the direction events are about to take. Discovering her despicable husband has gambled away all their savings, Yayoi snaps. Before she realises what she has done, her husband is dead from strangulation.
Yayoi is desperate and she manages to persuade Masako and, eventually, Yoshie and Kuniko to help her rid the body for money. The body is dismembered, secured in many black bin-liners and hidden all over Tokyo city. It is isn't long before one foolishly hidden bag is discovered and the police begin to ask questions. As if things weren't bad enough, the women begin to blackmail each other, a loanshark is requiring their services and the dark presence of an ex-criminal who has lost everything because of their antics has begun to hunt the women down.
In an obscure sense, the four women find the much-needed escapism from their dreary lives. However, the way out is not easy and it is certainly not pretty, and the women soon have to pay the price for asserting their existences.
