This is the second crime novel by Natsuo Kirino to be translated into English. Following on from the rather brilliant -Out. Grotesque, though undoubtedly an ambitious book, becomes drowned under the overloaded weight of it. It ends up largely losing the immediacy, humanity and moral clarity of its predecessors intent.
The central character here is not even given a name. Though she is the main narrator, you instinctively distrust her not remotely likeable personality. She is the type of woman who chose, yet resents, living a life largely invisible to others. Everyone remarks and fawns over her younger sister Yoriko's beauty, as a result her elder sister cultivates an intense dislike of her. Who this elder sister is, feels constantly diminished by the over shadowing of Yoriko's presence. How can she even be Yoriko's sister? Her sister turns into the source of all her difficulties in life. The elder sister is a humourless woman. It has to be said, she hasn't a good word to say about anyone, for very long. Often conspiring to engineer situations that will bring social pain or shame upon others. She has become, driven by her sibling rivalry, a bit of an all round shit.
We know from the start that both Yoriko and the elder sister's pretend school friend Kazue Sato, end up being murdered prostitutes. Through the progress of the novel, you hear other voices, extracts from Yoriko's diary, police crime reports, letters from her old Professor, the murderers purported background story. The latter appearing over half way into the novel, is a major upheaval to the narrative structure established so far. Presented in long unnecessary detail.
Whoever's story you are hearing, the same feeling persists of being told falsehoods. Convienient self deceptions tidying up what was in actuality much much messier. In real life you would not trust these people. The veracity of the world view they are recounting, is questionable. There's not many characters who remains comfortable to empathise with. Most end up chosing to be pimped for prostitution, or join a religious sect and murder just for the fun of it, or various other nefarious misfortunes. After a while you want these self absorbed narcissicsts out of your head. That said, Kirino with her characteristic acuity, does demonstrate that prostitution is one, admittedly desperate, way for some Japanese women to grasp a small amount of agency over their lives. But that agency, because it is outside the norm, always comes at a huge cost.
There were, for me, far too many moments whilst reading Grotesque, when I was all but ready to hold my hands up and cry enough! It's been couched in terms of it being a character study. However, because these characters are so unpleasant or irredeemably self preoccupied company, it makes the story hard going for a lot of it's 400 plus pages. Then at 300 pages in, as we enter the final chapters, we are presented with the diary of Kazue Sato. Finally Kirino warms up the cold heart of this novel with strong shafts of what feels like a genuinely real person and situation, that breaks in and suddenly emotionally anchors it all. But by then it feels too late for this to fully redeem the whole arc of the novel.
Out, cleverly mixed the disturbingly macabre with the humdrum reality of ordinary urban peoples lives. The fundamental problem, for me with Grotesque is that it makes everything so damned hard to like. Characters are either irredeemably bland, vengeful. unappealing or truly awful. Emotional truthfulness feels to be absent. Too little of what is presented here rings true as an accurate representation of real life. You learn precious little of any value through reading it.
CARROT REVIEW - 4/8
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