Sophia C. reviewed on 1/4/2010 + 289 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

Grotesque is a riveting, razor-sharp indictment of societal and gender roles in modern Japan delivered through three vivid first-hand accounts. Two aging streetwalkers are brutally murdered; they were both students at the prestigious Q High School for Young Women in Tokyo. Stitched together by their diaries, depositions and the "overall" narrator--the plain, unnamed older sister of the once monstrously beautiful prostitute Yuriko--Natsuo Kirino sheds light on a universe of painful solitude, darkness, and how societal preoccupation with beauty and youth warp susceptible young women into grotesque beings. Yuriko was a lascivious Lolita-esque beauty preyed upon in youth only to become an undesirable whore later in life. Her older sister, always living resentfully in her shadow, never emerges from her inferiority complex. Katzue Sato, another Q student always awkwardly trying to fit in, splits into a career woman by day and prostitute by night. Billed as a work by an author of "feminist Japanese noir," this quick-paced novel will frustrate those who believe in the power of positive thinking. All the characters resent everything about the world. However, Grotesque, like Kirino's other works (Out and Real World), represents a masterfully spun cautionary tale of how characters find themselves in untenable situations when they let societal norms crush their psyche.

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