Out

A suburban Tokyo woman fed up with her loutish husband kills him in a fit of anger, then confesses her crime to a coworker on the night shift at the boxed-lunch factory. The coworker enlists the help of two other women at the factory to dismember and dispose of the body. Readers beware--Kirino's first mystery to be published in English (it was a best-seller in Japan) involves no madcap female bonding. The tenuous friendship between the four women, all with problems of their own even before becoming accessories to murder, begins to unravel almost immediately. Money changes hands. The body parts are discovered. The police begin asking questions, and a very bad man falsely accused of the crime is determined to find out who really deserves the punishment. The gritty neighborhoods, factories, and warehouses of Tokyo provide a perfect backdrop for this bleak tale of women who are victims of circumstance and intent on self-preservation at all costs. --Carrie Bissey Copyright 2003 Booklist

Four women who work the night shift in a Tokyo factory that produces boxed lunches find their lives twisted beyond repair in this grimly compelling crime novel, which won Japan's top mystery award, the Grand Prix, for its already heralded author, now making her first appearance in English. Despite the female bonding, this dark, violent novel is more evocative of Gogol or Dostoyevsky than Thelma and Louise. When Yayoi, the youngest and prettiest of the women, strangles her philandering gambler husband with his own belt in an explosion of rage, she turns instinctively for help to her co-worker Masako, an older and wiser woman whose own family life has fallen apart in less dramatic fashion. To help her cut up and get rid of the dead body, Masako recruits Yoshie and Kuniko, two fellow factory workers caught up in other kinds of domestic traps. In Snyder's smoothly unobtrusive translation, all of Kirino's characters are touching and believable. And even when the action stretches to include a slick loan shark from Masako's previous life and a pathetically lost and lonely man of mixed Japanese and Brazilian parentage, the gritty realism of everyday existence in the underbelly of Japan's consumer society comes across with pungent force. (Aug.) FYI: This novel has been made into a Japanese motion picture. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Published for the first time in English, this critically acclaimed Japanese novel brings the mystery thriller to new levels of intensity and realism, drawing readers into a nightmare of murder, suspicion, and fear. Four women, night-shift workers at a factory, band together to help a co-worker who strangles her deadbeat husband. The mastermind, Masako Katori, a middle-aged wife and mother, steers this group of despairing women out of their dead-end lives and into the dangerous underworld of murder and deceit. Skillfully crafted, the novel reveals the frustrations and pressures that drive these women to such extreme measures; the realistic detailing of everyday routines gradually draws the unsuspecting reader into a horrific plot that unfolds into a terrific cat-and-mouse game with the police, the yakuza crime organization, and these sinister women. Winner of Japan's top mystery award, Out has great plot twists, intensity, and an ending that would make Hannibal Lecter smile. This title will fit well in any public library collection.-Ron Samul, New London, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Horrifying violence lurks a hairsbreadth beneath the surface of drab modern Tokyo in veteran Kirino's award-winning English-language debut. Masako Katori works with three friends making box lunches on a night-shift assembly line. Night after night they take turns dishing rice into containers, smoothing it out, placing pieces of meat or fish on top, and covering it with sauce before returning home in dull despair to their tiny apartments, indifferent mates, unresponsive children, and mounting debts. One night one of the team strangles her abusive husband and, remorseless but fearful of exposure, calls on Masako for help. Soon all four friends know about the murder, and they all band together to conceal it from the authorities. Their unlikely strategy, whose every banal discussion and grisly procedure is presented in pitiless detail, doesn't entirely succeed in fooling the police. But the women have made far more dangerous enemies, from an aspiring rapist in their factory to a nightclub owner their handiwork has inadvertently put out of business, and what happens to them unfolds in a series of shocks it would be unfair to reveal. Dramatic as the plot is, however, it's the penetration of Kirino's insight into her characters and their capacity to keep surprising each other that linger longest in this grimly satisfying tale. Crime and Punishment meets A Simple Plan--yet in the end Kirino manages her banal heroines' descent into hell like no one you've ever read before. (N.B.: The Japanese film of Out premiered in New York in late May.) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A suburban Tokyo woman fed up with her loutish husband kills him in a fit of anger, then confesses her crime to a coworker on the night shift at the boxed-lunch factory. The coworker enlists the help of two other women at the factory to dismember and dispose of the body. Readers beware--Kirino's first mystery to be published in English (it was a best-seller in Japan) involves no madcap female bonding. The tenuous friendship between the four women, all with problems of their own even before becoming accessories to murder, begins to unravel almost immediately. Money changes hands. The body parts are discovered. The police begin asking questions, and a very bad man falsely accused of the crime is determined to find out who really deserves the punishment. The gritty neighborhoods, factories, and warehouses of Tokyo provide a perfect backdrop for this bleak tale of women who are victims of circumstance and intent on self-preservation at all costs. ((Reviewed July 2003)) Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews

Published for the first time in English, this critically acclaimed Japanese novel brings the mystery thriller to new levels of intensity and realism, drawing readers into a nightmare of murder, suspicion, and fear. Four women, night-shift workers at a factory, band together to help a co-worker who strangles her deadbeat husband. The mastermind, Masako Katori, a middle-aged wife and mother, steers this group of despairing women out of their dead-end lives and into the dangerous underworld of murder and deceit. Skillfully crafted, the novel reveals the frustrations and pressures that drive these women to such extreme measures; the realistic detailing of everyday routines gradually draws the unsuspecting reader into a horrific plot that unfolds into a terrific cat-and-mouse game with the police, the yakuza crime organization, and these sinister women. Winner of Japan's top mystery award, Out has great plot twists, intensity, and an ending that would make Hannibal Lecter smile. This title will fit well in any public library collection.-Ron Samul, New London, CT Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Four women who work the night shift in a Tokyo factory that produces boxed lunches find their lives twisted beyond repair in this grimly compelling crime novel, which won Japan's top mystery award, the Grand Prix, for its already heralded author, now making her first appearance in English. Despite the female bonding, this dark, violent novel is more evocative of Gogol or Dostoyevsky than Thelma and Louise. When Yayoi, the youngest and prettiest of the women, strangles her philandering gambler husband with his own belt in an explosion of rage, she turns instinctively for help to her co-worker Masako, an older and wiser woman whose own family life has fallen apart in less dramatic fashion. To help her cut up and get rid of the dead body, Masako recruits Yoshie and Kuniko, two fellow factory workers caught up in other kinds of domestic traps. In Snyder's smoothly unobtrusive translation, all of Kirino's characters are touching and believable. And even when the action stretches to include a slick loan shark from Masako's previous life and a pathetically lost and lonely man of mixed Japanese and Brazilian parentage, the gritty realism of everyday existence in the underbelly of Japan's consumer society comes across with pungent force. (Aug.) FYI: This novel has been made into a Japanese motion picture. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.