Real World

In a crowded Tokyo suburb, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer. When one of them, Toshi, discovers that her next-door neighbor has been brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor’s son. But when he flees, taking Toshi’s bike and cell phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of dangers that rise from within them as well as from the world around them. Psychologically intricate and astute, Real World is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before.

“Brilliant feminist noir. … Sleek, assured and disturbing. … Reads like Little Women in an acid bath. … You won’t want to miss it.”—The Plain Dealer

©2006, 2008 N. Kirino; Translation: Natsuo Kirino (P)2025 Recorded Books

Wow…

This is the 4th Kirino book that I’ve read and ‘wow’….they have a way of lingering in your head as very vivid images and soundscapes of whole scenes and moods. I love it!

The different perspectives of this one was a standout: each of the teenage characters seemed to go off the deep end, in reaction to the initial crime, in completely different ways. Very memorable.