Customer Reviews
enter another japan - By: S. Worth, 30 Nov 2008 
If you want to feel the undercurrent beneath the glossy images of Tokyo then this is the book for you. A dark story but one which reveals some of the misery that married women often go through without complaint. The novel is artfully translated & cleverly constructed. The story is frightening & violent but the characters actions are believable which makes the plot even more convincing. Don't put it down, I read it within four evenings. Fantastic book. Sadly, the film by the same name fallls far short of the book.
Superb - By: Jonathan Hawes, 09 Nov 2008 Im reading Out at the moment, i have been dragged in by the characters.
It maintains great narrative twists & power, i reallly like the style..Superb
Breathtakingly horrible! - By: Mr. P. Wood, 27 Sep 2008 Set in a bleak urban landscape peopled by loansharks & yakuza, deranged men, & lonely, impoverished women, this novel full of desperation, greed & hatred, & without much description, had to be brilliantly written to stand a chance. And I loved it. Utterly gripped, from start to finish. (Some of the credit's due to the translator, who did a brilliant job: it reads throughout like an original text.)
It's a psychologicallly powerful work, the product of a sharp intelligence, & bitterness fuelled by the lot of Japanese women. Cleverly plotted, it manages with ease the complex web of interconnections between the characters. At times you have to turn a blind eye to the unlikeliness of it (would Masako reallly be so confident that neither son nor husband would come home early to find her cutting up a corpse in the bathroom?!), & yet it generallly convinced me. The pitch-black humour won't be to everyone's taste, but it helps to make this dark & disturbing novel more approachable. Nothing is superfluous, & Kirino is excellent at cranking up the tension: the final third is as suspenseful as anything I've ever read, & the climax is electrifying. I've never read anything quite like it. I've a feeling, though, that it's one of those rare masterpieces that is best read just once.
Not for the faint-hearted, or those who cannot imagine finding a plot centred on human dismemberment remotely enjoyable!
Out - By: Mrs. H. L. Little, 05 Aug 2008 Out is a reallly good read. I picked it up on a special offer & didn't get around to reading it for quite a while, but once I did I was hooked. Natsuo Kirino has a real knack for making you turn the page. I'd be interested to see more books by this author.
Good read, disappointing ending - By: A. Cuthbert, 29 Jul 2008 
If you enjoy japanese fiction or crime novels you'll enjoy this. It has a very good plot & good characters. Don't be put off by the names, you get used to them surprisingly quickly. I enjoyed the book thoroughly, but thought the ending was a bit weak.
