From the Editors

This book begins when freelance writer Yuki's big brother is found dead and decomposing in his apartment room, having starved himself to death.
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Ineresting psychological drama.
Randy Taguchi, Outlet (Vertical, 2000)

Electricity is one of the main concerns of the modern world, whether one is generating it, using it, trying to conserve it, or what have you. It's rather odd, then, that I've never encountered a novel that uses electricity as such a central motif as Outlet, Randy Taguchi's flawed, yet compelling, first novel. Flawed because it's got some typical first-novel problems. Compelling because, well, it's compelling. I'll explain that bit later.

The novel opens with the death of Taka Asakura, who we initially perceive as a no-good roustabout through the eyes of his similarly no-good father and his sister, Yuki, a financial writer with a secret--she's also a sex addict. Taka's death was somewhat mysterious; he simply wasted away, and Yuki wants to find out what brought him to the point where he simply couldn't be bothered to live anymore. As she gets closer to understanding what it was that drove Taka to suicide, Yuki, forced into contact with people from her past, must also confront her own demons.

Much of what the novel lacks is in its pacing, which is a pretty common malady among first novels; Taguchi got famous as a blogger, and oftentimes the novel feels like a series of blog entries, but with plot and characters. The pacing problems get better as the novel goes along, though, and Taguchi gets past the setup stage and into the real meat of the novel--Yuki's own problems and the measures to which she must go to solve them. There are a few overly convenient bits involved in this to get us farther along, but nothing unforgivable or too overt.

On the other hand, these characters are well worth getting to know. Yuki is an exceptionally well-developed character, and those she comes into contact with multiple times through the novel are also well-drawn and complex. The mysteries she tries to unravel have less to do with the things you'd find in conventional mysteries; this is a psychological novel more than it is a mystery, and the puzzles she has to solve are more of the emotional variety. I suspect that those who can identify with Yuki's (or Taka's) neuroses will find this book much more fulfilling than those who don't. Is that you? Take a chance on this one and find out. *** ½

The Worst Book I Have Ever Read
This book is a wasteland. The characters are all flat, and stupid. Most of them are the same person. Analogies with technology that were meant to make the book seem modern and edgy only show just how poor the author's understanding of technology really is. The conclusion is a pile of puerile, self-congratulatory nonsense.

Every other page either has the word 'plug,' 'outlet,' or depicts our protagonist having sex. Guess what? "PLUG" and "OUTLET" are Taguchi's idea of a clever reinterpretation of SEX. (spoilers!) Our main character is a woman, thus OUTLET. Good job, there. Very deep.

They ought to call her "Ozymandius" Taguchi, because when I look upon her works, I despair.

what a stinker
wow, this book was a stinker. it's been a long time since i've read a book that so drearily insisted on explaining, ad nauseum, every last thought the author has. she might as well have given us a manual. at least it might have had pictures.

the characters are flat and lifeless (no doubt they ran away as soon as they discovered that the author wasn't going to let them speak). the plot wants to be a philosophical with a macabre twist when it grows up, but it has sooo much growing up to do. at the end, the book devolves (if such a thing is possible) into a quasi-poetic slush of self-congratulatory drivel, which, if nothing else, leaves the reader free to skim those last 15 pages and, with relief, close the book and throw it in the resell pile.

if you want good, weird japanese fiction, go read haruki murakami or banana yoshimoto. don't waste your time on this one.

More than a mere Ghost story
When I bought this book, I expected to be entertained by another good Japanese tale of ghosts and spirits.
However Outlet is much more than that.
Yuki, the main character is a young woman who lives her life and sexuality as a man: she is emotionally detached and is not shy about living a full sex life.She comes from a very dysfunctional family, her father is a drunk, her mother is abused and her brother is just plain strange.The latter dies of self starvation, and when Yuki visits his appartment she smells the smell of death.She also sees his ghost, but that ghost is there to give her amazing revelations concerning her own nature.
This is an interesting and entertaining book, even for skeptic readers like me .

The smell of death...It is not that bad...
Randy Taguchi's debut novel opens with the protagonist, Yuki Asakura, waking up after a night of lovemaking with an acquaintance, a photographer named Kimura. Like all of the other men who have slept with her, and there are many, Kimura is a bit obsessed with Yuki, but she does not return his affection. As normal for her, after she has sex, she loses interest in men.

With Kimura still in bed, Yuki clicks on her laptop and reads the stocks. As a freelance finance writer, the stock market is the one thing, well, maybe booze, also, that truly interests Yuki. Its movements and its total lack of emotion and the way its glacial indifference affects the world enthrall her. After her sleep-muddled head clears, Yuki leaves the love hotel. While walking upon some train tracks she spots her brother Taka and his dog Shiro, but how can this be? Her father, in a drunken rage, beat the dog to death years before. When she calls out to her brother, he disappears.

After she returns home, Yuki receives a phone call from her parents informing her that her brother is dead. Spooked that she might have seen her brother's ghost, Yuki learns of the horrific way in which her brother died. After renting a new apartment, apparently Taka lost the will to live. Resting upon a quilt that covered a tiled floor, Taka allowed himself to starve to death and because his family had lost contact with him, his body was not discovered until it had decomposed. The stench of the gelatinous puddle of rotting blood and maggots had permeated the entire apartment building.

Being that her parents were in no condition to take care of more mundane matters, Yuki saw to it that her brother's possessions were taken care of and she made amends with the owner of the apartment building. However, while inside the apartment Yuki is overwhelmed by the stench of rot and afterwards she is able to detect the slightest trace of rot and death. She becomes so adept in fact that she can tell when someone is sick.

However, this is only the beginning. Yuki is haunted by her brother in her dreams and eventually seeks the help of her old college advisor, a psychologist with whom she had shared a twisted relationship with years before. Wanting to discover why her brother died and why he was obsessed with outlets, Yuki journeys into the depths of her own mind and as she peels back the layers of her subconscious, she reveals the dark putrescence of her own past. A past she has to come to terms with herself in order to understand not only why her brother died, but to prevent herself from following his dark path.

Famous for her online diary in Japan, Taguchi is one of a number of female writers who have entered Japan's literary scene in the last decade. While not quite as explicit as Sakurai Ami or Kanehara Hitomi, Taguchi is still quite graphic, but unlike the former, Taguchi seems to have more to offer the world of letters than shock value. Another value the novel possesses is that it gives the reader a glimpse of individuals who suffer from a condition called Hikikomori, which basically translates into seclusion. These individuals are generally males who have basically given up on life. Dependent on their parents, they hide in their rooms for upwards to a year at a time

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