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グロテスク〔下〕[Gurotesuku, #2]
Gurotesuku (Volume#2) [Japanese Edition]
453 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2006
1 person is currently reading
23 people want to read
About the author
Natsuo Kirino
96 books2,802 followersNATSUO KIRINO (桐野夏生), born in 1951 in Kanazawa (Ishikawa Prefecture) was an active and spirited child brought up between her two brothers, one being six years older and the other five years younger than her. Kirino's father, being an architect, took the family to many cities, and Kirino spent her youth in Sendai, Sapporo, and finally settled in Tokyo when she was fourteen, which is where she has been residing since. Kirino showed glimpses of her talent as a writer in her early stages—she was a child with great deal of curiosity, and also a child who could completely immerse herself in her own unique world of imagination.
After completing her law degree, Kirino worked in various fields before becoming a fictional writer; including scheduling and organizing films to be shown in a movie theater, and working as an editor and writer for a magazine publication. She got married to her present husband when she turned twenty-four, and began writing professionally, after giving birth to her daughter, at age thirty. However, it was not until Kirino was forty-one that she made her major debut. Since then, she has written thirteen full-length novels and three volumes of collective short stories, which are highly acclaimed for her intriguingly intelligent plot development and character portrayal, and her unique perspective of Japanese society after the collapse of the economic bubble.
Today, Kirino continues to enthusiastically write in a range of interesting genres. Her smash hit novel OUT (Kodansha, 1997) became the first work to be translated into English and other languages. OUT was also nominated for the 2004 MWA Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Novel Category, which made Kirino the first Japanese writer to be nominated for this major literary award. Her other works are now under way to be translated and published around the world.
After completing her law degree, Kirino worked in various fields before becoming a fictional writer; including scheduling and organizing films to be shown in a movie theater, and working as an editor and writer for a magazine publication. She got married to her present husband when she turned twenty-four, and began writing professionally, after giving birth to her daughter, at age thirty. However, it was not until Kirino was forty-one that she made her major debut. Since then, she has written thirteen full-length novels and three volumes of collective short stories, which are highly acclaimed for her intriguingly intelligent plot development and character portrayal, and her unique perspective of Japanese society after the collapse of the economic bubble.
Today, Kirino continues to enthusiastically write in a range of interesting genres. Her smash hit novel OUT (Kodansha, 1997) became the first work to be translated into English and other languages. OUT was also nominated for the 2004 MWA Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Novel Category, which made Kirino the first Japanese writer to be nominated for this major literary award. Her other works are now under way to be translated and published around the world.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 13, 2013
reading the bunkobon version, which means that the story's split into two volumes (上・下). it's taking me longer than expected to get through this, but only because kirino natsuo's prose here is simply masterful - the narrative voice is so assured and total and completely in control that each sentence feels almost inevitable, dread and insight locked together in verbal form. it's a perverse pleasure, reading this book - perverse because the words emerge from a terrible place of resentment and hatred. more on this probably later. now on to part 2!
「ユリコより、わたしが遥かに頭がいいのはわかっています。が、悔しいことに、頭脳では人に感動を与えられないのです。恐るべき美貌の持ち主というだけで、ユリコは大きな感動を与えられる存在ではあるのです。しかし、ユリコのお陰で、わたしもある才能に恵まれました。その才能というのは、悪意です。飛びぬけてはいるけれど、誰にも感動を与えない才能……だからこそ、この苛烈な学校でも、傍観者として楽しく過ごせたのです。」
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and now i'm done with 下. (annoying that goodreads won't let me review these as two separate entries!) really loved this, though by "loved" i mean "was devastated by." i think what separates kirino natsuo from other would-be suspense writers with a predilection for the twisted and bizarre is that she gives her characters dignity, as warped as they are. even when they lie there is something desperately vital and urgent in their (self-)deceptions, and an indictment there of a society that accepts those lies as truth. by the end of the story, you realize that "grotesque" is actually a word filled with human empathy in kirino's hands - an empathy that lends itself well to all the extreme storms of emotion that make us who we are: hatred, hurt, despire, despair. 憎しみと混乱。怪物らしき感情。
「ユリコより、わたしが遥かに頭がいいのはわかっています。が、悔しいことに、頭脳では人に感動を与えられないのです。恐るべき美貌の持ち主というだけで、ユリコは大きな感動を与えられる存在ではあるのです。しかし、ユリコのお陰で、わたしもある才能に恵まれました。その才能というのは、悪意です。飛びぬけてはいるけれど、誰にも感動を与えない才能……だからこそ、この苛烈な学校でも、傍観者として楽しく過ごせたのです。」
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and now i'm done with 下. (annoying that goodreads won't let me review these as two separate entries!) really loved this, though by "loved" i mean "was devastated by." i think what separates kirino natsuo from other would-be suspense writers with a predilection for the twisted and bizarre is that she gives her characters dignity, as warped as they are. even when they lie there is something desperately vital and urgent in their (self-)deceptions, and an indictment there of a society that accepts those lies as truth. by the end of the story, you realize that "grotesque" is actually a word filled with human empathy in kirino's hands - an empathy that lends itself well to all the extreme storms of emotion that make us who we are: hatred, hurt, despire, despair. 憎しみと混乱。怪物らしき感情。
September 10, 2022
“Grotesque” tracks the life experiences that lead to two murders. We view events in our lives through the personal lens of our beliefs, values and experiences. Another person with a different lens can see the same events in a very different way. The book explores this by telling the story from the differing perspectives of four protagonists. There are no likeable characters in Grotesque, it must be said, aside from the grandfather. The quartet of school companions, the murderer, the secondary male characters, all are pretty awful.
Harsh and horrific, it certainly lives up to its title, and will definitely stay with you once you have finished reading. A shocking and tragic and it is a difficult book to rate: I admire its boldness, and its cast of deeply drawn characters. I guess after 500+ pages I wanted it to take me somewhere. It left me sort of cold and stunned.
Harsh and horrific, it certainly lives up to its title, and will definitely stay with you once you have finished reading. A shocking and tragic and it is a difficult book to rate: I admire its boldness, and its cast of deeply drawn characters. I guess after 500+ pages I wanted it to take me somewhere. It left me sort of cold and stunned.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews