Name: Real World
ISBN: 9781448103881

Natsuo Kirino

In a suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls drift through a hot smoggy August and tedious summer school classes. There's dependable Toshi; brainy Terauchi; Yuzan, grief-stricken and confused; and Kirarin, whose late nights and reckless behaviour remain a secret from those around her. Then Toshi's next-door neighbour is found brutally murdered and the girls suspect Worm, the neighbour's son and a high school misfit. But when he disappears (taking Toshi's bike and cell phone with him) the four girls become irresistibly drawn into a treacherous vortex of brutality and seduction which rises from within themselves as well as the world around them.

Real World

Carina Almeida

My second book of this author. A really quick read! Can't wait to read more. :)

chan

Nico J

I've often heard that "Out" is considered Natsuo Kirino's work, and I can see why that is true. I believe that novel was her first work translated into English, and it incorporates her standard mystery themes - that is, those archetypes that surface with consistency. My personal favorite has always been "Grotesque," but the reason is difficult to pinpoint. I do not find that the quality of "Out" is any less than that of "Grotesque." Perhaps their characters are more colorful and relevant to me, given that they are of high school / college / young adult age and struggle while building their lives, only for some of those characters to meet a desperate, drowning end. "Out" follows middle-aged women and their factory life, and while it was engrossing, the characters were more difficult to relate to, maybe simply due to my younger age. Where does "Real World" fall? In between the two, quite close to usurping "Grotesque" as my favorite. Again, the younger archetype fascinates me a bit more, their adolescence entwined with narcissistic rebellion and dangerous, spiraling introspection creating a dangerous boiling pot for the young girls with chaotic lives. 

Worm is a brat, plain and simple, and I was peering between the lines for a better glimpse of the cause of his issues - but all I managed to find was that grating narcissism. Clearly, his grasp on reality was failing, but why? No reasons to justify murdering his mother, so the descent must have begun at a much earlier point in time, if it was even ever a path taken. Perhaps it was his entire perspective of reality on life. Kirarin particularly frustrated me as twisting the situation to fit her complex, but alas, she was an adolescent and maybe we all remember our less-than-logical views on life as a teenager. I expected her death as soon as she began to show interest in Worm - I didn't expect it to happen the way it did. It's blameless and I find that frustrating. Terauchi would have been a born writer, and likely would have met an untimely end early no matter what the circumstances. Not only that, her ideas would have revealed so much about her age group and modern Japanese society, which is why I find it fitting that she chose to remove herself from an overwhelming world that wasn't going to ask her if she was all right. It seems like a metaphor for the entire reason the book was written - the lack of insight of the pressures of modern Japanese society and how it is effecting the people that we (outsiders, foreigners) view as archetypes within a myth of technology, cuteness, insane work ethic, tradition, and intelligence. Shattering the myth is important, and every ethnicity has one. 

Toshi reflected the average archetype, and yet by the end her life it had changed drastically because of the events set in motion. She characteristically blames herself but has to live through the death of two friends and restructure her ethics, morals, and mores. Yet did that happen? It implies an ongoing cycle at the end, but it's difficult to say. Summarily, the adolescents operated in a world separated, or at least loosely connected, to their parents', who also led tumultuous lives. Little do teenagers understand that their parents are in a third world, their own created, built-up reality. Which is the "real one?" That's exactly the point; there isn't. I find the gritty, impersonal, and urban world fascinating, and the womens' perspectives equally interesting, as I did in "Grotesque." I think this could have been much deeper, but arguably that would make it lose the compelling feeling to muse on it later, and perhaps read it again with a different, critical eye.

When a teenage girl discovers that her neighbor has been brutally murdered, and the victim's son—and prime suspect—steals her bike and cell phone, she and her friends are plunged into danger in this Japanese feminist noir thriller. Reprint.