Out [Anglais] [Broché]

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. FYI: This novel has been made into a Japanese motion picture.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

When a poor working mother in Tokyo 's sprawling suburbs murders her abusive husband, she calls upon the women she works with to help dispose of his body. This tabloid of desperation and gender warfare moves forward with the deliberate inevitability of the Noh theatre. Narrator Bernadette Dunne has the skill to inform the listener not only through accents, but also by tendering emotions in the voice of each character. Her voice conveys every nuance of fear, elation, and even resignation. The women are delineated with such skill that they move before our eyes. Truly a journey into the underbelly of urban life, this novel is not for the faint of heart. B.H.B. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

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 © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Intricately constructed, like the assembly of a mosaic, stone by stone. Even the minor characters are vivid and memorable. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Stark realism, lit up by flashes of unexpected humor and psychological insight. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"Crime and Punishment meets A Simple Plan...like no one you've ever read before." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"Kirino's tale is so dark, so gruesome and so depressing, it left this reader reeling." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"OUT offers an intriguing look at the darker sides of Japanese society while smashing stereotypes about Japanese women." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"A masterful and psychologically astute novel." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Nothing in the sometimes hazy history of Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino's award-winning mystery OUT, a work that took the Japanese literary scene by storm and continues to haunt the popular consciousness as a recently released major motion picture.

Kirino's novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo Suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her dead-beat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.

The ringleader of this cover-up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of OUT and as one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako's own search for a way OUT of the straitjacket of a dead-end life leads her, too, to take drastic action.

The complex yet riveting narrative seamlessly combines a convincing glimpse into the grimy world of Japan's yakuza with a brilliant portrayal of the psychology of a violent crime and the ensuing game of cat-and-mouse between seasoned detectives and a group of determined but inexperienced criminals. Kirino has mastered a "Thelma and Louise" kind of graveyard humor that illuminates her stunning evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds and the friendship that bolsters them in the aftermath.

OUT shows its author to be Japan's finest mystery writer as well as one of the most astute observers of contemporary society, revealing, in the course of its gripping pages, the fears, hopes, and obsessions that drive a complex country. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

A masterpiece of genre from the queen of Japanese crime.
A Vintage Original.

Natsuo Kirino, born in 1951, quickly established a reputation in her own country as one of a rare breed of mystery writer whose work goes well beyond the conventional crime novel. This fact has been demonstrated by her winning not only Japan's top mystery award - for OUT in 1998 - but one of its major literary awards - the Naoki Prize in 1999, for SOFT CHEEKS.

The hugely successful OUT is the first of her novels to appear in English. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.