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Gary Wood, August 23, 2008

You will have already read deep into Natsuo Kirino’s potent new novel REAL WORLD when you meet Terauchi. As one of four young women on the eve of their adult lives, as grown-ups, with responsibilities and burdens, Terauchi is the more intellectual and philosophical of the four, but no more mature, or prepared for the awesome changes that will engulf their final Summer together.

REAL WORLD is written in a 1st person narrative, with each of the main characters having their own chapter (or two) in which to tell their story.

In Terauchi’s chapter, Chapter 6, she expounds upon her constant desire to tell people this, "There really are things that are irreparable". She explains in a somewhat muddled, but no less compelling manner as to what this means, and why she sometimes finds herself so consumed by the thought, and unable to hold it in any longer, she just blurts it out for no good reason.

"Something that's really irreparable is more like this: a horribly frightening feeling that keeps building up inside until your heart is devoured. People who carry around the burden of something that can't be undone will one day be destroyed."

"There really are things that are irreparable", at first reading will strike many as an interesting diversion away from the more compelling aspects of the story, namely matricide. But, ultimately Terauchi’s philosophizing will come to be a very poignant mantra, and coda.

Terauchi states that she could never just blurt out such a thing to Yuzan or Kirarin. In a brilliant passage, Terauchi describes the vacant nature of her two less than intellectually curious friends:

"It’d be like a lighthouse, where the spotlight rotates and, for an instant, illuminates something. But, once the light moves on, everything melts back into the dark."


REAL WORLD is a hypnotic thriller that carries you dreamily along, carelessly dropping in and out of the minds of these five sympathetic and challenging characters. There’s an inescapable fatalism to the structure of the novel, as we are forced to sit with each character within the chapter, and as you near the end of the book, a gnawing anxiousness seeps in, as you begin to worry about whether this story will have a satisfying climax, and how will Ms. Natsuo do it. Will there be closure? Who will have the last word?

There is closure, and there is a very satisfying climax

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