Grotesque, by Natsuo Kirino

ELLE
March 2007

In 2003, Natsuo Kirino's Out introduced a thrilling new genre to American readers: feminist Japanese noir. Its four female accomplices in murder were bound together not by solidarity or friendship but by a desperate will to survive in a cruel, misogynistic world that darkly satirized Japan. The trio of antiheroines in Grotesque (Knopf), Kirino's latest book, feel similarly bound and betrayed by societal convention—but instead of using gender's double-edged sword against their male persecutors, these women find themselves trapped under its blade.

Grotesque traces events leading to the murders of two Tokyo prostitutes—and former schoolmates—who couldn't be more different from one another. Yuriko, a nympho maniac of Japanese and European descent who is smarter than people give her credit for, was "monstrously beautiful" in her youth, while Kazue is a clueless nerd with a prestigious day job and delusions of grandeur. Both have a toxic relationship with the book's narrator, Yuriko's bitter older sister (we never learn her name), who hates Yuriko for her smug beauty and Kazue for her belief that she, too, could ever be beautiful. Through the journals, letters, and commentaries of these women and those connected to them, we learn that their lonely lives are inextricably linked and their downfalls all but inevitable. While the many unhappy voices in this book sometimes blend into a cacophony, Kirino's point comes through loud and clear: "Why is it, in this world of ours, that women are the only ones who have a hard time surviving?"