Twisted novel of suspense

From the continent where we stand, Japanese culture looks like a classic case of Orientalism. Yet rather than the pattern of misrepresentation of a non-Western world that Edward Said questioned, our reading of Japan is based on the sense of the "uncanny" that fuels our fascination with, what seems to us, a culture of contrasts. Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha introduced us to a ceremonial, manufactured world while the lollipop-lipped Harajuku Girls inspire Gwen Stefani and designers. The cherry blossom season is a delicate birth yet cults sowed savage death in the subway. The food is the healthiest in the world, but a badly dissected puffer fish can kill you in seconds.

This world of contrasts is where Natsuo Kirino's strength lies: the everyday life she writes about may be endlessly fascinating to us Westerners, but she brings out the everyday bizarre of Japan in an easy, offhand manner. Even the topics she writes about, usually centred around the supposedly softer sex, so misaligned and almost mistreated in a sexist country, are sharper than the knife on the cover of her first novel, Out.

Grotesque tells of the murder of two prostitutes, whose lives are intertwined with the narrator's: one is her sister, the other was her studious schoolmate. Both became, for odd or not so odd reasons, street walkers. And both ended up murdered.

As a thriller, every word and page does the job, gripping you like bleeding fingernails and not letting go until you read the last word, close the book and breathe easy. Ms Kirino's brilliance, though, lies in how she unfolds the tale through multiple narrators. Every main character in the book gets to be a raconteur, their lives forcefully translated through subtle changes in style. The strongest character of all - or maybe the weakest, in this duplicitous world - is Yuriko's sister, who remains nameless. When she sees the presumed killer in court, she does not fall slave to any emotion. Rather, she analyses his face, having read a book on physiognomy, and tries to figure out how a man so unattractive could think of himself as being film-star material.

The detectives on the case are numerous but unidentified and hardly mentioned, and so we never feel that we will discover what really happened. The real, self-appointed private investigator is the narrator, who does her sleuthing through her mental meanderings and her discoveries of other people's diaries.

Of great interest is Ms Kirino's take on the Japanese educational system which either makes you for life, or breaks your back. If you manage to get into such schools as the Q System described in Grotesque, then you are guaranteed an excellent job and fulfilment. Most of the female characters in Grotesque have been to Q: the only ties that bind them are the sacrifices their families made to squeeze them through and the circumstances they end up in. Nobody is what they appear to be, even in the simplest of stories.

The massive villa one pupil rents is falling to bits; another rents an apartment in a posh area yet in reality lives in a poor part of town.

Such fragmentation is sustained throughout Grotesque. Where are the detectives who are supposed to be investigating the murders? Did the killer really murder one victim, as he confesses, two, as he doesn't, or maybe more? Or even none? What happened to his sister, who also ended up on the streets?

There is a rare glimpse of gentleness in the story of the accused, a Chinese immigrant who recounts traversing treacherous waters to get to Japan, the land of his dreams. The reader sympathises, feels for his tragedy, identifies when his sister is snatched away from him and wonders whether they'll ever see each other again. Then, in equal waves of emotion, we hate him as we realise his degenerate monstrosity.

Waves of emotion - envy, jealousy, love, hate, deception and disappointment - beat relentless, leading the reader into the depths of the human heart where we drown, happily.

■ In times of trouble Mr Borg turns to a good book and the ice-cream tub.

A review copy of this title was supplied by Agenda Bookshop.