Real World
Natsuo Kirino
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
<span>A stunning new work of the feminist noir that Natsuo Kirino defined and made her own in her novels <i>Out</i> and <i>Grotesque.</i><br><br>In
 a crowded residential suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage 
girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer and 
endless “cram school” sessions meant to ensure entry into good colleges.
 There’s Toshi, the dependable one; Terauchi, the great student; Yuzan, 
the sad one, grieving over the death of her mother—and trying to hide 
her sexual orientation from her friends; and Kirarin, the sweet one, 
whose late nights and reckless behavior remain a secret from those 
around her. When Toshi’s next-door neighbor is found brutally murdered, 
the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor’s son, a high school boy 
they nickname Worm. But when he flees, taking Toshi’s bike and cell 
phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of 
dangers—dangers they never could have even imagined—that rises from 
within them as well as from the world around them.<br><br>Psychologically intricate and astute, dark and unflinching, <i>Real World </i>is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before.</span>