Book review: Grotesque

AUTHOR Natsuo Kirino has successfully pulled me into the world of bitterness she has created in Grotesque.
Her story and characters were so engrossing that I was eager to know the outcome of the story, and it kept me turning the pages.
The novel is written from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, who tells the story about two people in her life – her younger sister, Yuriko, and her classmate, Kazue.
Funnily enough, the narrator hates both of them, and with great intensity. The two, also strangely enough, became prostitutes and were killed by the same man.
When I started reading the novel, I found the characters to be both selfish and self-centred. Like the narrator, I started to dislike them intensely.
But after finishing the novel, I hated them a little less.
If you read between the lines, you will begin to understand that all of the characters, including the murderer, were starved of love and affection, and sadly, they looked for these in all the wrong places.
The novel is far from perfect. There are some chapters that seemed to drag on.
But I find I can overlook this because, somehow, the novel has captured my attention and I will probably read it again.
Still, I must warn you that this bitter, grotesque world created by Kirino may not be everyone’s cup of tea. –