Natsuo Kirino – Grotesque
Jan
03
A story of decay… decay of the human nature. A story about how society and other people can influence one’s life and make them turn into a monster. A story about childhood in the Japanese society and in one of the most prestigious schools there. A story about prostitution and a story about murder. That’s what the author lays in front of our eyes.
Our storyteller is a Japanese woman in her forties, who has always lived in her sister Yuriko’s shadow. Hating her sister for the extreme beauty she possessed, she had always considered her to be a monster and always tried to be nothing like her. Turning into prostitution at a very early age, Yuriko ends up murdered by a Chinese man, who came to work illegally in Japan.
We also have Kazue’s story, a girl who has been taught that all you need to do is try your best and you can accomplish anything you want to. But this disillusion turned her into a monster who thought that by being both a career woman and a prostitute made her better than any other woman out there. She ends up being murdered by the same man who killed Yuriko.
We witness the decay of these people. We witness their actions and emotions in a cruel reality.
Grotesque is a novel that can really make you wonder. It makes you wonder about how your actions can influence someone’s life and how your decisions and choices can influence your own life. It makes you wonder about your dreams and hopes. What ever happened to them? Every one of us had dreams, we all have goals, hopes for a better life, but in the end, how many of us will actually accomplish them? How many of us can say that they had all their dreams come true? Every human being starts their life in the same way…what makes us who we are today?
Have you ever wondered where you would have been if you had made a different choice at some point in your life? There are many things we cannot control, that would change our lives, but it’s up to us to try our best to have the life we want and not the one decided by society or any other person.
I started rambling..sorry, but these are the kind of thoughts reading Grotesque had me thinking.
Getting back to the novel now 
I really liked how the same story is being told by different characters. You get to have insight from all the angles. I don’t know why, but I have a thing for Japanese culture and society. I like reading about that. When I first started reading the novel I was expecting a few more thrilling details about the murders, but instead we get an interesting insight in the life of prostitutes. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, on the contrary, I think it’s the salt that makes this novel what it is.
A layered exploration of the human psyche, of the conflict inherent in need and desire, shame and humiliation… A powerful study of people humbled at the altar of superficial values.
(The Philadelphia Inquirer).
I admit to having ‘grotesque’ thoughts from time to time, but I try to keep them as seldom as I can. I believe life is, indeed, what we make of it, but thinking about what you could have made instead of what you did make just brings a person down.
Of course, I resent having chosen a path that I do not necessarily belong to nowadays, but, as long as it is satisfactory and calming, I still prefer this one to the other troubled one I had imagined myself choosing.
I guess I just wonder what would have been if I had liked a bohemian life. Or a more intriguing existence than the one I am leading now.
You’re right, thinking about things like that does bring a person down, but I couldn’t help having those thoughts while reading the book. I know it’s fiction, but still, it made me wonder