Own Voices

https://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Crime-Black-Lizard-Anniversary-ebook

OUT by Natsuo Kirino

This is not a novel for the faint of heart (trigger warning!) but a powerful entry into contemporary Japanese culture and its hardships for women. As always, I’m somewhat tone-deaf to Japanese/Chinese novelists’ nuance of narrative expression, which I read as flatness. But the men and women who drive the action–most of it grimy to say the least–make valiant efforts to pinpoint their states of mind and clarify their loyalties and ambitions. Yoshie, Masako, Kuniko, and Yayoi who work the night shift together at a food packaging factory take up the lion’s share of the narrative with their restrictive personal situations, exasperations, and follies.

When Yayoi strangles her treacherous husband, Masako steps up to keep her out of trouble. All four women are ultimately drawn into the cover-up and thrust into the orbits of the two main villains: Jumanji and Satake. These name-changing men with gangster connections are complex and evolving characters whose resolve and ambition are tested by the women they’d hoped to control.