Synopses & Reviews
In a crowded Tokyo suburb, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer. When one of them, Toshi, discovers that her nextdoor neighbor has been brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor's son. But when he flees, taking Toshi's bike and cell phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of dangers that rise from within them as well as from the world around them. Psychologically intricate and astute, Real World is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before.
Review
“Kirino unflinchingly describes the contemporary social conditions of teenagers from their point of view...[and] honestly depicts the blatant as well as subtle acts of violence done by and to teenagers in modern Japan....Highly recommended.” Library Journal
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“Instead of one lone maniac, Kirino makes adolescent ennui and detachment the villain, tracing out a spooky cultural phenomenon that makes this new translation a purely psychological thriller.” Time Out Chicago
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“If Real World is indeed a work of social realism, Kirino is either a masterful cynic or the cartographer of a very scary side of reality.” The New York Sun
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“Jealousy, solipsism, fear, arrogance — the mind of an adolescent can be a frustrating and scary place....[Real World] takes us deep inside the heads of these kids.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
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“A novel that looks at the emotional vacuum of teenage culture, one less affected by a brutal murder and its emotional aftershocks than by the glow of its association with a manufactured outlaw....Kirino delves deeply into the feelings of isolation and hopelessness that each girl shares....She works to understand how the girls can become so disassociated from their own moral center, ultimately insinuating that after being raised in a culture of texting, reality shows, etc., they’re looking for any connection to the feeling world.” Providence Journal
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“[A] taut thriller....[Kirino] has a knack for portraying the lives of teenage girls.” More
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“Disquieting and suspenseful.”
Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review
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“Brilliant feminist noir....Sleek, assured and disturbing....Reads like Little Women in an acid bath....You won't want to miss it.” The Plain Dealer
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“Kirino demands total submission to her characters' inner lives....[Real World] challenges readers to confront the truth of human nature, to release judgments about violence and see beyond the act to its roots.” The Miami Herald
About the Author
Natsuo Kirino, born in 1951, quickly established a reputation in her country as one of a rare breed of mystery writers whose work goes well beyond the conventional crime novel. This fact has been demonstrated by her winning not only the Grand Prix for Crime Fiction in Japan for Out in 1998, but one of its major literary awards — the Naoki Prize — for Soft Cheeks (which has not yet been published in English), in 1999. Several of her books have also been turned into feature movies. Out was the first of her novels to appear in English and was nominated for an Edgar Award. Kirino is also the author of Grotesque.