Real World (Paperback)

From Kirino (Grotesque, 2007, etc.), a tale of teens driven to extremes.Toshi is getting ready to go to cram school - summer drill sessions to help her get into a good college - when she hears the sound of breaking glass coming from the house next door to hers in a nice Tokyo suburb. Later, she discovers that her neighbor - a boy she calls "Worm" - killed his mother that morning, and that he has stolen her bicycle and her cell phone. She keeps what she knows from the police, but she tells her three best friends. Narrated in alternating voices, this novel relays the story of five young people who fail to navigate the dangers of adolescence. The fact that their brutal idiocy varies in quantity, rather than in quality, from that of the typical teen should be a source of horror as events spin irretrievably out of control. The grandiose self-pity and sheer foolishness of these kids is believable but frustrating: The desire to take away their texting privileges and send them to bed without supper quickly overtakes the desire to keep reading. At the same time, the language in which their dialogue is rendered is often stiff and unconvincing. Even in a culture that places a high value on scholastic testing, it's hard to believe that kids would use vocabulary-test words like "blithely" and "dumbfounded" in their internal monologues. And, in the moments before Worm first decides to kill his mother, the worst epithet he can muster is "old bag." Like teens pretty much everywhere, Japanese kids are known for their inventive patois; one would hope that a kid driven to matricide could muster a lively expletive or two.Exasperating. (Kirkus Reviews)

In a suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls drift through a hot smoggy August and tedious summer school classes. There's dependable Toshi; brainy Terauchi; Yuzan, grief-stricken and confused; and Kirarin, whose late nights and reckless behaviour remain a secret from those around her. Then Toshi's next-door neighbour is found brutally murdered and the girls suspect Worm, the neighbour's son and a high school misfit. But when he disappears (taking Toshi's bike and cell phone with him) the four girls become irresistibly drawn into a treacherous vortex of brutality and seduction which rises from within themselves as well as the world around them.

General

Imprint:	Vintage
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	September 2008
First published:	September 2008
Authors:	Natsuo Kirino
Dimensions:	190 x 135 x 15mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	208
ISBN-13:	978-0-09-952319-2
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-09-952319-1
Barcode:	9780099523192

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