the Natsuo Kirino hour

A couple of interesting interviews appeared over the weekend in the Daily Yomiuri Times. The first is with Edgar nominee Natsuo Kirino, who was happy to be nominated for OUT (which she actually completed 8 years ago) but is also relieved not to have won:

“I was so grateful to get the nomination, but at the same time, I now feel a bit relieved not to have won the prize,” Kirino says. While she is thrilled that her works are highly rated and gaining a readership abroad, she feels wary of becoming typecast as a “mystery award” novelist.

“If I’m presented (commercially) in that way, I’ll end up being confined to that one category, so I’d rather my works spread gradually among readers abroad just by word of mouth,” Kirino said.

Whether she realizes such “typecasting” has probably already happened, at least in English-speaking countries, is another matter entirely…still, Kirino’s newest book, GROTESQUE, is in the pipeline for translation and looks to be quite a fascinating read.

The Yomiuri also interviewed British expat David Peace, who has called Japan home for the last 10 years. Kirino’s work has impressed him very much, as has Japanese crime fiction in general:

Peace said he likes the “real feel” of Japanese mystery novels, an element he thinks is missing in many of their British counterparts.

“One thing I like about Japanese novels I read in English is they are very realistic,” he said. “So, when you read them, you learn a lot about Japanese society.”

Another thing he recognized is a traditional gothic element at the very end of OUT, which he also has seen in works by Edogawa, Yokomizo and Yasuo Uchida.

“I think Western readers will be very shocked by the end of OUT, because it’s so kind of violent and sexual…but I thought it’s kind of a part of the Japanese mystery tradition,” he said.

The ending certainly was a shocker but at the same time, it seemed a fitting resolution to the story’s horror-tinged elements cloaked in working-class mundanity.