He is a hero to them as well as a fascination, like a disgusting vivisection in a science class. The girls get involved in Worm’s crime and his flight from the police. He identifies with a severely tortured Japanese soldier from a film, thinking that, just like the soldier, the world is against him, the enemy is everywhere, no one understands. He is scared and unhappy in that silent, belligerent way particular to teenage boys. Only Worm, the boy who murdered his mother with a baseball bat, is different, but we get too little time with him. They have different lives and interests, but their voices are too similar. The girls are surprisingly introspective and cognizant of their own personalities and foibles.
The voices in “Real World” are not as distinct.
Each is unique in voice and point of view open the novel anywhere and it’s obvious who is speaking. In an earlier novel, “Out,” the first of Kirino’s books to be published in English, four unusual characters tell versions of the same gruesome event. Jealousy, solipsism, fear, arrogance - the mind of an adolescent can be a frustrating and scary place. “Real World,” the 16th novel by award-winning Japanese author Natsuo Kirino, takes us deep inside the heads of these kids. And one girl assumes a new name, hoping a new identity comes with it. Another feels worthless after a boyfriend’s rejection. A popular girl feels betrayed by her mother’s affair. A young lesbian frequents a gay bar, is beaten by a transvestite, but won’t come out to her friends. Translated from the Japanese by Philip GabrielĪ teenageR murders his mother and cannot articulate why.
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