Natsuo Kirino is an angry young woman. I understand and appreciate that in an author. I read her crime thriller "Out" before and thoroughly enjoyed it. "The Goddess Chronicle" is the yang to that yin. It's written in a very different style - like an ancient legend - but it still deals with the way women are treated badly in society. Poor Namima. Has any woman been more poorly used? Labelled as "impure" at five years old, she is expected to tend to the dead and kill herself when her sister's life ends. Island tradition demands she be alone, always, except for her dead charges - never marry, never fall in love, a perpetual virgin. In spite of this she does fall in love, and she falls in love with the wrong man. Used again and murdered, she joins Izanami in the underworld, and becomes priestess to the goddess of death who once was a goddess of creation before she died in childbirth and was shunned by her lover. The book looks at passionate anger and the emptiness of revenge, but it also deals with the roles of women since the beginning of time. Often heartbreaking, the story is huge, but is written in an objective and impersonal style, best described perhaps as mythic, from a first person perspective. Not an easy balance, but it works more or less. I preferred the modernity and claustrophobic closeness of "Out", but I think this book is still a huge achievement.
4/5 stars.