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SYNOPSIS: Yuriko is too beautiful that her older sister, who is also the novel’s narrator, considers her a monster, "an effigy more than a human being." With skin "the color of those Meissen porcelains from Germany" and an appeal that her uncle Karl and the 51-year-old married American neighbor cannot resist, she is a nubile temptress, a willing Lolita. Even her mother announces that she is Yuriko’s maid so she won’t have to explain how she had produced a child so different from her. As everyone else had expected, Yuriko grows up to be a prostitute: "For a nymphomaniac like myself, I suppose there could be no job more than prostitution; it is my God-given destiny." Then one day, she gets murdered. A few months after, a former schoolmate and fellow prostitute, Kazue Sato, is also killed. Yuriko’s elder sister looks back at their turbulent years together at the cutthroat Q High School for Young Women in Tokyo, and as she does, she stumbles upon answers that might just make sense of the murder.

MAKINGS OF A PAGETURNER: But Grotesque (Random House, 2007) is never just about the murder. It’s never just about prostitution. In fact, throughout the narration, the crime is almost effaced, becoming second only to the psychological examination of Yuriko, her sister and Kazue. This is a character sketch, a very fine one. Natsuo Kirino, the Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee for her debut novel Out, has spawned a wasteland of dysfunctional characters, never buckling away from exposing disturbing, life-is-not-a-fairy-tale realities.

Remarkably haunting is the chronicle of what is it like to be a student of Q High School for Young Women in Tokyo, where beauty matters above intelligence. As a student, Kazue has always been an attention whore, "adept at deluding herself." She joins the skating team even if she cannot skate and sews a Ralph Lauren logo to her socks to illustrate that she is "cool." The narrator, unnamed right to the end of the novel, believes she is in a hellhole herself, after her sister has been admitted to the school on the basis of her doll-like appearance.

LITERARY FAUX PAS: Grotesque seems to be dependent on anger to keep the narrative running from the first page to the last. This novel is not so much grotesque as it is hateful. Almost all of the characters, except for Yuriko’s handicapped son, have distorted the kindness of humanity. It seethes with so much negativity you will have to stop yourself from closing the book and throwing it against a wall.

The book adapts three voices – Yuriko’s sister, Yuriko and Kazue, but they don’t differ from one another. Not one of them has a distinct voice, which is funny, because Yuriko is portrayed with an IQ lower than average yet her language is as impeccable as her sister’s. The novel is also repetitive in that it keeps pointing out the comparison between Yuriko and her sister. This emerges in almost every other page it makes you want to scream, "I get it, okay?!"

Too detailed, too expansive, too wordy, Grotesque spoonfeeds the reader, leaving a little room for imagination and analysis. The ending is also a copout – a cowardly, uncreative device of wrapping up a mediocre story.

WHY IT’S A MUST-READ: The novel’s most visible accomplishment is it gets down to the core of the characters and lacerates the social stigma on beauty. Grotesque openly discusses all the taboos – pedophilia, teenage sex, incest, child abuse, adultery, murder and prostitution – and there is a reason for this: this is a social commentary, a thesis on submissiveness and above all, a close and critical inspection of the female psyche. — Samantha Echavez