Henk's Reviews > De nachtploeg

A slow moving tale of misogyny and loneliness, that in the end disappointed me
I read this novel 13 years ago and now dropped it two stars down due to the uneven, rather repulsive ending and the slow moving pace of this "thriller". The story doesn't warrant 500 pages.

“You know," she murmured, "we're all heading straight to hell."
"Yes," said Masako, giving her a bleak look. "It's like riding downhill with no brakes."
"You mean, there's no way to stop?"
"No, you stop all right - when you crash.”

Masako (badass main character), Yoshi (older widow who takes care of her mother in law), Yayoi (pretty but been abused by her husband) and Kuniko (younger woman deep in debt) work in a lunch box packaging facility. They do the nightshift to earn some more, because part time jobs don't really earn all that much otherwise.
All people around the four main characters are damn right awful, including their family members.
The tale of poverty and loan sharks is a bleak one, especially combined with the seemingly universal misogyny, occurrences of domestic violence and even attempted rape.
Also the women, despite their heavy night shifts, still are universally expected to take care of domestic life. They are essentially all taken for granted by others, or try feebly to exert some power over others in response to how their environment treats them.

This is the background for Yayoi killing her husband, and this common thread of misery leads the others to help her in disposing the body. Naturally this has all kinds of ramifications, not least a sadistic gambler boss coming after the four women.

Around page 300 one of the character is musing, when inquired if she felt something changed inside her due to the help she gave with the dissecting of Kenji, that no, nothing changed, because she always seems to be expected to be responsible for all shitty jobs anyway.
You feel sorry for them (except Kuniko) and can understand how the desperate lack of money and agency leads them to their actions. That is what Natsuo Kirino does expertly, with some perspective on how immigrants are treated in homogenous Japan as and added social commentary that really still feels timeless and relevant today.

The language in Out feels effective at best, not really polished, but clearly communicates the dreary circumstances the characters find themselve in.
A device that comes back is that literally everyone constantly seems busy with smoking, constantly and everywhere, it’s nowhere functional to the plot and started to feel as a filler.
The entire book feels very slow for a thriller in my opinion.
The ending, with a final explosion of violence (a twice depicted rape amongst other things) and a kind of weird Stockholm syndrome, really grated me.