Out MP3 CD – Unabridged, September 20, 2016

As i read through this book i got a range of emotions.One was anticipation, boredom, brittleness, judgment, annoyance, excitement... and that's about it. This book had the absolute potential to become a masterpiece just if the characters were a little different and the later part of the book developed differently. The writing seemed tell, not show, maybe the translator was lost, and the characters all seemed...strange. The author wanted to make them ordinary, but wouldn't ordinary people actually respond to dealing with a dead body and murdering someone a little differently then just a mild freak-out and a bit of sweat? The author wanted Masako to seem smart, experienced and the leader, though she just fell flat. Kuniko i guess was the most realistic in terms of using her money and responding to the situation. The main characters were just bland and nearly sadistic. How Yayoi wasn't even a little guilty for murdering her husband and lying to her children about it? She almost seemed excited afterwards while thinking about her husbands body on the floor. I don't have much to say about Yoshie; Skipper, but really, there could be more to her as well. More frustration and character.There was lots of pointlessness but also lots of moments that made me think we were finally going somewhere with the plot, but no. The lame, strange, pointless ending that happened too fast.Personally i would've liked this book to be longer, go more into the affect that the chopping of the bodies had on the women and their states of mind and the "business" that Jumonji had set up going along more, and have the ending out and replaced with maybe something to do with the son, who interested me, and maybe something a little more thrilling. To go out with a bang.Satake was the only character that caught my interest and didn't fall completely flat, though the weird sympathy with him at the end seemed very off putting to me. Actually, it really bugged me. Masako was beaten and raped and tied up, though seen as a cold character, waited with Satake as he died and didn't want him to die? Really? Utter sympathy from an unsympathetic character towards her own rapist. It disgusted me.To put this simply, this could've been a great book put on my top shelf but instead made the reader feel mildly disappointed and turned off. I would read this again far ahead in time, and only if i had re read my other books beforehand 30x.

Incredible story telling and DARK but so real. The darker it got the more plausible it was. This author really knows a thing or twenty about human nature.

What started off as interesting became almost laughable, like with a woman who imagines she'd be willing to die if it was at the hands of the brutal monster of the story. C'mon, give me a break. Or how the ordinary female characters simply decide to dismember murdered people just for the money. It is too unbelievable and ridiculous. As the story evolves, I find myself shaking my head and feeling irritated to have spent so much time trying to give this book a fair read. Will not read anything else by this author. It is so bad at the end that I am writing this review mere pages from finishing the book, but I could not wait any longer to say "Don't bother." You will be irritated, if you like murder mysteries, by the sheer poor storytelling. Read the negative reviews, as I agree almost to the word, what they say. UPDATE: This book ends in a rape scene. It is awful and the plot is so bad by this point, that I have now tossed this book before getting to the end.

Having read this book in the original Japanese, i was curious about the translation. Some called it bland while others said it was "excellent" and even Amazon's own reviewer calls it "unobtrusive". Well, it does not appear that any of these opinions were rendered by people who could compare it to the original so perhaps my two cents here will not be a total waste.In my opinion, the English translation of "Out" is a work unto itself. I wouldn't even call it a translation; more like an "interpretation". many things which are stated in Japanese are not stated in English. I mean things like, you know, nouns, verbs, adjectives, perhaps entire sentences... it's not like these are subtle nuances.I think this was deliberate on the part of the translator, whose obvious aim was to create a very smooth, readable product in English. i think he has succeeded in that respect. I think the publisher's marketing arm should be quite happy with its unobtrusiveness.However, i'm not so sure that i agree with that approach to translation. maybe if you're translating poetry or something whacked out like Finnegan's Wake, you have no choice but to take some serious poetic license. But geez, this is a novel. There is a lot of descriptive language--Kirino's Japanese is much more challenging than, say, Murakami Haruki (himself a translator) or Suzuki Koji (he of The Ring fame). So, i agree that it would not be easy to do a straight-up translation and make it seem like it was originally written in English. But to me, that's half the fun. why do we need to pretend it needs to sound like it was written in English to begin with?If there are subtleties (grammatical, cultural, etc.) which are too convoluted to convey in a normal English sentence, would it really hurt the book's sales figures that much to throw in a footnote or two? Perhaps endnotes if that is asking too much? I have read Korean translations of several of Kirino Natsuo's books and they all contain translator's notes. These notes provide valuable information to the reader of the translation. The fact that they are present in the Korean translations but absent from the English translations indicates to me that certain American publishers tend to look down on their readership. They seem to believe their readers do not have a sufficiently long attention span to read even the slightest footnote, as if such notes would be awkward and out of place, overly "scholarly".In recent years works by the likes of Dostoevsky, Kafka and Natsume Soseki have been retranslated because the old standbys were overly interpretive and people reading the translations actually wanted to know what these guys were saying. Obviously something is always lost in the translation; i just don't think it has to be this much.

Kind of a silly plot but well written and entertaining. I enjoyed it overall.

I apologize for not liking this book. It is very well written, with coherent story and extremely well developed characters. It is macabre, but the genre requires this element. So what made me not like it? I got the uncomfortable feeling the author secretly approves and even admires the character who killed a woman in a most bloody and horrible way and then fell in love with her because they shared a "deeply intimate moment". Even brutal rape at the end where this person is perpetrator is somehow portrayed as an act of "uniting" two people, to the extend that the woman afterwords harbors something akin to romantic feelings to the criminal who attacked her. In my book this is simply sick. Add pretty graphic descriptions of dismemberment and you have a story which is guaranteed to make me disgusted. It may be a portrait of the Japanese social bottom but it doesn't mean the actions described there are somehow justified. Ugly and dark, the story is as far from uplifting as can possibly be. You are welcome to read and judge yourself. I finished reading and deleted the book from my Kindle for good. Will not read anything else by this author.

At a recent dinner party I met someone who is an avid reader. We agreed to read each other’s favourite Japanese books. I gave him 1Q84, he gave me Out. We told each other nothing about our suggested books. I went into reading it with no knowledge of the subject matter. If I had not been set the challenge, or had read the blurb, Out would not have made my TBR pile.This book is not for the feint of heart. It addresses themes of murder, dismemberment and rape. There is no filter. Trying to see past that, I have looked for why my dinner party friend would make the recommendation. It does have strong characters (you have to work hard at the start to remember who is who), it has a real feel of place and it is psychologically dark.But, this will be the last book I read by Kirino - it has its audience, but it does not include me.

This is ‘noir’. It takes us to the darkest places of the human psyche and of society. It is engrossing, but definitely not pleasant.Living in London, I have the impression that Japanese women are elegant, sophisticated and well-mannered. They have their lives together and enjoy a relatively high standard of living. This book is not about such women, but rather about women surviving on the edge, economically and psychologically. It is set in 1990s Tokyo, in the harsh times that followed Japan’s economic boom and bubble of the 1980s – think austerity Britain of the past decade.We learn what we need to know about the characters and their context to understand their decisions, but no more: the emphasis is on the narrative rather than lots of description, so the story moves along quickly, accelerating as the book progresses.In recent years I have been reading the Italian noir of Massimo Carlotto and the Irish noir of Ken Bruen, which tend to be male-dominated. Written by a woman and with women as key protagonists in a less familiar social context, Out makes an interesting change.I really enjoyed the book, and have now started on another of Kirino’s novels (Grotesque).

I just read it feeling that I was missing something, a bit like something had been lost in translation.The characters were interesting to a point, but to me the book takes an unbelievable twist....

A beautiful cover with stunning end papers, this is a powerful book, but one that starts and indeed remains dark in subject matter throughout. A refreshing premise and a well-structured pace, this is certainly worth a read if your like your Japanese translations.