This is a “hard-boiled” crime thriller, set in Japan, written by female author Natsuo Kirino, translated into English from the original Japanese by Stephen Snyder, and published by Vintage International.
Hard boiled generally refers to fast-paced books about the gritty and seedy underbelly of the world. The characters are out for themselves, are all flawed and sometimes hard to sympathize with. Think film noir, the sexy blonde dame going to the alcoholic detective.
There is a wide cast characters that the reader gets histories on, but is mainly about 4 women barely making ends meet by working nights in a lunch box making factory. These women are not very close, but are still the closest thing to friends any of them seem to have.
Kuniko, a self-centered woman in debt to loan sharks.
Yayoi, is a mother of two and is the catalyst of the novel.
Yoshie, aka Skipper, living in a soon to be demolished apartment with her teenage daughter and invalid mother-in-law.
Masako, an intelligent and clever woman estranged from her family and generally isolated from the world.
The action starts early with Yayoi killing her husband Kenji. She in turn asks Masako for help, and in spite of herself, Masako agrees to help. Because of Yoshie’s money problems, Masako ropes her into helping dispose of the body. Kuniko shows up unexpectedly to borrow money from Masako, and ends up helping the two by being promised to get, not borrow, money.
Kuniko is the most untrustworthy, but is essential to moving the storyline along. Because of her the body is discovered.
(Some people might consider this next part a spoiler, but I don’t, it seems like a regular turn of events, a true spoiler section will be marked off right..)
Luckily for the women, the murder gets blamed on a club/casino owner and pimp Satake, but since the charges don’t stick, he’s released. But his life is over, with his club and casino gone he wants revenge on the person(s) who actually killed Kenji.
Also, because the body was discovered Yayoi receives his life insurance money of 52 million Yen, with the provided currency exchange in the front of the book, this is about $416,000 US
Masako and Satake have a bit of a cat and mouse game for the end of the book
Between the wavy lines means spoilers.
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In the last few months of marriage Kenji spent their life savings of 5 million Yen ($40,000) going after Satake’s “number 1” girl, and at the casino. Satake and Kenji fight the night Yayoi kills him.
Masako’s life had turned bad fast, she and her husband stopped sleeping in the same room, and their son hadn’t spoken for a few years after being expelled from high school. She was looking for an escape.
She used to work in finances, but being a woman Masako was denied promotions and was ostracized, the company found an excuse to fire her when they merged with another company. With too much pride she didn’t try to find work at another company, finding work at the factory instead.
Kuniko owes money to Jumonji. And the murder has become high profile. Kuniko reveals to Jumonji that she will be coming into money, and by extorting Yayoi into being the guarantor of her loans, Jumonji knows something is up. He writes off Kuniko’s debt in order to get the full story.
Jumonji used to work indirectly with Masako. Eager to work with her, he proposes a business venture. His friend Soga would find the clientele, Jumonji would pick up the body, deliver it to Masako for preparation, and then he would get it to the incinerator.
Satake meanwhile has been gathering info on these women. He kills Kuniko and purposely contacts Soga to dispose of the body.
When Satake was younger he went too far and killed a woman. He raped her while torturing her. Since then he hasn’t been able to have sex with a woman. And finds himself drawn to Masako.
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I’ve left out a lot, including the ending.
This is the first time I’ve read a “hard-boiled” novel, I‘ve only read short stories of them. So I can’t really give any comparisons, and am personally not sure if it was good book. I thought it was interesting, strange and sometimes graphic.
But I would re-read it, and I would be interested in reading more of them.
I enjoyed the change of the novel. In the beginning I kinda liked almost all these women, on the surface these are familiar characters, people we would like, but then through the events and their personalities, their flaws and problems come glaringly to light, and it becomes harder to continue liking them.
One of the biggest themes of this novel is what roles women are supposed to play. The most obvious is with Masako and her previous job. But other than this, throughout the novel is youth and beauty. Kuniko tries to find jobs but is turned down because they are looking for women under 30, and in reality probably no older than 25. Yoshie’s daughter finds a summer job that pays 80 yen more than the factory during the day, (The reason they all work at night is because the pay is better than the day) and thinks, is it only because they’re so much younger? The reader never learns how much they make at the factory, but from this its assumed that Yoshie would probably only be making slightly more than her daughter.
Jumonji would be considered a dirty old man by American minds, he’s not really that old, but he goes after teenage girls. At one point he is with a girl and he gets a call, within the span of the call she is being swarmed by a group of men (with the same intention of Jumonji) and he loses her to one of them. I’ve never been to Japan, but by at least their manga (comic books) this is portrayed as a rather every-day thing.
These four women became friends to make work easier, and this idea spills into the rest of the novel, being friends in order to survive.
It is a provocative book that examines relationships, the reasons and ways in which people come together and interact.
