Grotesque in Three D
Natsuo Kirino’s novel GROTESQUE was reviewed in Newsday by Charles Taylor, the San Francisco Chronicle by David Cotner and in the Philadelphia Inquirer by this reporter. Taylor was not as favorably inclined toward the book as I was. David Cotner was positive, picking different elements to focus on, all of which indicates a healthy disparity of opinion about the novel.
GROTESQUE intimidated the hell out of me when I began to read. The style is jarring and the presentation unusual but the reward was great for sticking with it. Is it a crime novel? Probably not. David Cotner describes the narrator as suffering from “unstoppable anhedonia.” I looked it up: anhedonia is the inability to derive pleasure from normal enjoyable experiences. The author makes no attempt to blame the Office Lady Murders for the narrator’s condition, that disorder is in place long before Yuriko and Kasue die.
Ultimately though the nameless narrator seeks love in a disastrous way at the exact moment the novel ends. It’s a high risk approach by Kirino and I thought she made it work.
I’d like to see the work native to the crime genre rip some of the three act confines from within rather than from the literary edge. Natsuo Kirino began her career as a romance writer and she’s now classified as a crime writer in Japan, but she’s a daring innovative writer who will defy classification in a way that harkens back to the pre-Walmart era (1510-1998). Those were the days.
March 26th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Ah yes 1509 I remember it as if it was only yesterday.
March 26th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Home Depot opened a store outside York that year. They sold a lot of thatch.