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| Plot Summary of Out |
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"Masako Katori and her coworkers Yoshie, Kuniko, and Yayoi all work the night shift at a boxed lunch factory in the Tokyo suburbs. Each of the women has disagreeable elements in her home life from which she longs to escape (unresponsive or unappreciative families, abusive spouses, overextended credit lines, etc.). When Yayoi snaps one night and strangles her good-for-nothing husband Kenji, Masako and the others must dispose of the body. Led by Masako, the women engage in increasingly grisly business to liberate themselves, not only from evidence of their crime, but from the social and financial burdens that have been suffocating them. Just as things start to go right, everything starts to go wrong: at least two of the women commit careless, lazy mistakes that betray and endanger the others, and Masako must find a safe way out of the danger that threatens to destroy her.
Notable subplots involve a Brazilian-Japanese coworker whose relationship with Masako begins with an attempted sexual assault, and ends in friendship, and a successful club owner who has been ruined because he is (wrongly) suspected of Kenji's murder; he turns out to have darker secrets hiding in his past. This is Natsuo Kirino's first novel published in English, but she is one of Japan's most successful mystery writers; Out won both the Naoki Prize and Japan's top mystery award.
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A. J. Bell, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of Out |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- depressed
Time/era of story
- present (2000-2010)
Inside culture (main char)
- Japanese
Crime & Police story
Yes
Story of
- sympathetic "criminals" on the run
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Outside culture (society)
- Japanese
Ethnic/regional/gender life
Yes
Woman's story?
Yes
Main Character
Gender
- Female
Profession/status:
- blue collar
Age:
- 40's-50's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- Japanese
How sensitive is this character?
- hard edged
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- 40's-50's
Profession/status:
- small businessman
Eccentric/Smart/Dumb:
Yes
Eccentric:
- obsessed
- eccentric
- mentally ill
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- a moderate amount
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 3 ()
Asia/Pacific
Yes
Asian country:
- Japan
City?
Yes
City:
- dangerous
Style
Person
- mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death?
- very explicit references to deaths and torture
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- touching of anatomy
- actual description of hetero sex
- descript. of female anat. (the big B's)
- rape/molest (yeech!)
Amount of dialog
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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Click here for more information about this book
Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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