Real World

By Natsuo Kirino

Book Overview

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 nextdoor 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307387488
• ISBN13: 9780307387486
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Powerful & Amazing

I just finished reading this book barely 3 hours ago. It's such an amazing book, I wasn't sure if I would like it reading the back cover, but the reviews pushed me to buy it. I must say it was impossible getting me to stop reading it. It lets you into the mind of the main characters and it's just so amazing the words and the dialogue are so fluid and beautiful. It really is such a powerful book and the ending was so spectacular in all the best ways. I never saw it coming, it was so shocking and amazing. It completely recommend it to teenagers especially, it was almost creepy how I was able to connect to all the characters on some level.

Private Thoughts, Public Faces

Although Toshi Yamanaka is still officially on her summer holidays, she's isn't having the most enjoyable break - in an attempt to get the best grades possible, she's having to attend cram school. She lives in Suginami-ku, a residential area Tokyo that's grown a little more crowded in recent years. The family who loves next door to Toshi moved in two years ago, and they haven't made a great impression...the parents comes across as snobbish, while the son seems a little strange. Although he and Toshi are around the same age, they have never actually spoken - and, because of his demeanour, Toshi has nicknamed him 'Worm'. One morning, just as she's on her way out to cram school, Toshio hears a couple of strange crashes from the Worm's apartment - at first she worries Worm's home is being burgled, but she's a little relieved when she sees Worm leaving the building. Toshi and Worm have never actually spoken, but he hasn't made much of an impression - she views him as a nerdy, gloomy loner, someone who doesn't have a lot of life or spirit about him. Any time their paths have ever crossed, he's been unable to look Toshi in the eye, and always shuffled off towards the shadows. Today, however, he's behaving a little out of character when she meets him - he seems a little more confident about himself, in generally good form...he even stretches himself by actually speaking to Toshi. The day's strange start takes a lousy turn : on leaving school, Toshi discovers her bike and her mobile phone have both been stolen. When she gets home, a schoolfriend calls on the landline - who mentions that Toshi's mobile has just been answered by a young, weird-sounding guy. Worm, of course, is the obvious suspect... Toshi's barely put the phone down, when her mother arrives home in a panic - Worm's mother has been found murdered. It seems she was killed in the family apartment, roughly around the time Toshi met Worm that morning. Like Toshi, the police view Worm as the prime suspect...but, for some reason, Toshi says nothing to them about meeting Worm, hearing the noises in his apartment or about losing her bike and phone. However, it doesn't take her three closest friends long in finding out - Worm, with his teenage hormones playing up, has spoken to each of then on Toshi's mobile before the day was finished. (Worm's teenage hormones have got him into trouble before). Toshi's three friends are Terauchi , Yuzan and Kirarin - it's a pretty tight-knit group, with only Kirarin having friends outside of this circle. Each one views themselves very differently to how their friends view them...the complications in their lives and the belief that their friends wouldn't fully understand them contributes to the sense of isolation each one feels. It's an element that's particularly emphasized, as each character - Toshi, Yuzan, Kirarin, Terauchi and Worm - tells part of the story, in their own words, as it happens to them. Naturally, each has a slightly different take on things...

"Real World" is Modern-Day Japan

"Real World" is not just a book about Japan and young Japanese people, it is, in fact a written semi-fictional recording of modern-day Japan as it really has become these days. I should know, I live in Tokyo. I have lived here over 15 years and I have seen it all change so very much. And these days young Japanese are just like Worm and Toshi in so many ways, and THAT is what make this so book so significant and horrifying! Also Kirino is right on the mark with her portrayals of Japanese brainwashed college students, teachers, parents and the overkill 'Authority Rules' group mind that is destroying young individual students before they can even graduate. Get this book and read it. You may not believe some of it, but, believe me, its all too true. Five stars.