Product Description

Runa is a young Japanese high school teacher leaving the country to avoid the scandal she has created by sleeping with one of her students. She steals her sister’s passport and boards the ferry to Shanghai. Then, careful to impersonate her sister, she is quiet, docile and discreet…

Meanwhile, on the last stretch of a fraught and tiring mission to find a wife, an Englishman also boards the ferry. Rebuffed in Tokyo, Ralph hopes that on the Chinese mainland he will meet a gentle, beautiful girl to return home with.

When these two meet, suppressing at first their secrets and obsessions on this long and claustrophobic journey, we enter a desolate, emotional landscape as Runa’s journey begins to turn into a surreal and terrifying nightmare . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #428120 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 274 pages

About the Author

Susanna Jones grew up in Yorkshire and studied drama at London University, where she first became fascinated by Japanese culture. She has worked in Japan as a teacher and radio script editor and currently lives in Brighton. This is her second novel, following The Earthquake Bird, which won the 2001 CWA John Creasey Award for Best First Crime Novel.

Customer Reviews

An evocative and chilling novel.
I read Susanna Jones' first book The Earthquake Bird last year and enjoyed it immensely. I was looking forward to reading Water Lily and was glad to find that it more than lived up to my expectations. Jones's spare, finely crafted writing once again creates a dark atmosphere where nothing can be taken at face value. The moral ambiguity of the two main characters is both disturbing and compelling and Jones artfully weaves their strange lives together in a chilling plot that had me turning the last pages way into the early hours. Excellent.

An excellent book
I read Susanna Jones' first book The Earthquake Bird last year and enjoyed it immensely. I was looking forward to reading Water Lily and was glad to find that it more than lived up to my expectations. Jones's spare, finely crafted writing once again creates a dark atmosphere where nothing can be taken at face value. The moral ambiguity of the two main characters is both disturbing and compelling and Jones artfully weaves their strange lives together in a chilling plot that had me turning the last pages way into the early hours. A really excellent novel.

nonsense
This book is so bad i never even finished it, which is something i never do.I did not enjoy it at all. It's badly written and just complete nonsense.