Real World (KINDLE:MOBI) by Natsou Kirino

Natsou Kirino's Real World joins some of her earlier writings as another subversive critique of societal expectations of young people. Written from the subjective view of shifting narrarators, it relates the story of a group of teenage girlfriends caught up in the excitement of helping a fellow teenager, a boy they barely know, escape after he commits a vicious murder. Kirino manages to portray a world of children in which parents and teachers are almost entirely abscent from their lives except as resented but somewhat feared representatives of conformity and the monotonous boredom of their structured lives. The heat of the Tokyo summer simmers and shimmers as warm as the meaningless, thwarted rebellion of these girls, trapped as they are in the "real world" of which they will soon belong, and the other "real world" of their contained inner selves.