Out (アウト)

Name: Out (アウト)
Author: Natsuo Kirino

Natsuo Kirino

— 1997 —

“

Four women working night shifts at a Tokyo bento box factory cover up a murder committed by one of them.

The record

Time
An eveningA season
400 pages, about 8 hours: the length of 1.2 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climb
One reader needed time to settle into the opening; another abandoned the book three times before finishing it.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live by
In 18 reviews from critics and book blogs, 9 credit the plot and 7 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else does
One review compares it to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, on the shelf at 544 pages, and calls Out the bleaker book.

on the four women
“is as much a character study of disaffected housewives as a knuckle-clenching thriller”
Lori L. Tharps · Entertainment Weekly, 2003
on the characters
“Kirino’s insight into her characters and their capacity to keep surprising each other”
Kirkus Reviews, 2003
on the settings
“many of the locations described felt almost tangible”
three stars · a book blog
on Masako’s role
“the woman who orchestrates the body’s disposal is a brilliant creation”
a book blog

on the translation
“the wooden phrasing in Stephen Snyder’s translation lends a potboiler quality to the novel”
Katherine Wolff · The New York Times Book Review, 2003
on the tone
“slow, relentless, banal and gleefully grisly, to the point that it can rather strain credulity”
Stephen Poole · The Guardian, 2004
on the suspense
“there’s very little conflict and even less suspense”
two stars · a book blog
on the length
“I found it too lengthy, unnecessarily lengthy”
a book blog