GROTESQUE by Natsuo Kirino translated by Rebecca Copeland

Harvill Secker, £17.99

REJECTION ENGENDERS rebellion. The malicious revolt of the narrator against her Japanese family, school and society dominates Grotesque. From the moment that her freakishly beautiful younger sister is born, our heroine has it rammed home that women, whatever their credentials, cannot escape judgment based on their appearance.

Two prostitutes die at the start. One is the ravishing sister, Yuriko, the other Kazue, a plain and dogged high-school acquaintance of both women.

But this is not so much a murder mystery, more an exploration of what drove the two to sell their bodies and end up cheap, dead whores. Kirino’s answers are fascinating feminist propositions, amazingly well suited to the chill horror of the crime novel. For what all the women in this book seek is control.

The heroine, appalled in childhood by Yukiro’s influence over men and women, works to enter an elite school and leave her behind. When she arrives, she is dismayed to find the same worship of appearance that she sought to escape.

She refuses to adapt, beginning instead to cultivate malice, which stays with her through the story. She takes control by never seeking love, approval, or even recognition.

Enter Yuriko. She fails the entrance exam but entrances a teacher and is allowed in. She exercises total control at school: she makes money from men who desire her and is allowed into every club by the girls. Her beauty and self-knowledge bring unlimited freedom. From prostitution comes power.

The plain Kazue – a fellow pupil – is also observed on a lonely journey through school and into work in her twenties. Resentful after years of failing to be noticed or liked, despite her achievements, she also turns to prostitution.

This is born not out of economic necessity but from a desire to control men by having them want and need her. Of course, Kazue and Yuriko fade and as they do their control over men diminishes, leaving them vulnerable.

Some of the story is told through the diaries of Yuriko and Kazue, but it is largely the bleak worldview of the nihilistic narrator that informs us of events. As the icy epitome of uncaring rejection she represents a grotesque denial of normal humanity’s affections and hurt.

Kirino’s depiction of Japanese attitudes to women is pretty damning. As in Out, the first of her novels to be translated into English, women struggle to be taken seriously by men. They retreat into coldness, violence and dehumanisation in stories that are cool, angry and stylish and which fascinate and move the reader.

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy