Product Description

Middle-aged, jaded and divorced, TV scriptwriter Harada is forced to set up home in his office, situated in a high-rise apartment block overlooking Tokyo's busy Route 8. One night, nostalgic for his lost childhood, he decides to visit the entertainment district of Asakusa, the city's dilapidated old downtown area, and there, at the theatre, he meets a man who looks exactly like his long-dead father. So begins Harada's ordeal, as he's thrust into a reality where his parents appear to be alive at the exact age they had been when they died so many years before. Although they may be apparitions, he takes solace in seeing them, in spite of the damage it seems to do to his health. Can Kei, the mysteriously fragile neighbour with whom Harada begins a tentative relationship, save him from the ghosts of his past?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #429586 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
"'An eerie ghost story written with hypnotic clarity: quickly paced, intelligent and haunting with passages of acute psychological insight... Yamada is amongst the best Japanese writers I have read.' Bret Easton Ellis; 'Highly recommended... A cerebral and haunting ghost story - more a "Whoizzit?" than a "Whodunnit?" - which completely wrong-footed me.' David Mitchell"

Guardian
'Memorably uncanny … the powerful mood of Strangers lingers well after its graceful, downbeat ending has passed.'

Daily Telegraph
'Restrained and moving … what might have been a simple ghost story evolves into a psychologically acute portrait.'

Customer Reviews

Haunted
This book is simply beautiful. It's a pretty weird novel, but the prose is spare and perfectly used - a real modern masterpiece, it has a subtlety lacking in many novels. Not to mention how brilliant the characterization is. Six months after reading it, I am still truly haunted by it.

Victorian gothic comes to modern Japan
Although this is ostensibly a ghost story, it fits the genre of mystery more easily than the genre of horror.

The narrator, Harada, is a recently divorced TV script writer, coming to terms with his loneliness. He is deadpan and analytical in his delivery. Some of the phrasing does seem a little staccatto - and I see that another reviewer found the sentences rather complicated. I agree. It reminded me, if anything, of Sheridan LeFanu's victorian gothic mysteries - written at a time where ghosts were to be investigated and understood rather than feared.

The storyline is certainly odd: Harada meets up with his long dead parents and visits them for tea. Although he knows it to be wrong, his curiosity drives him on. Meanwhile, the rest of his life and relationships rapidly take a turn for the worse. The novel (novella?) perhaps suffers from brevity. With more space, the characters might have been enlarged a little, and perhaps the narrator made a little more likable; a little warmer. Having said that, the story does move on apace and this takes attention away from the lack of empathy with Harada.

The cover talks of a bizarre twist. I'm not sure it is really a twist - it is pretty obvious from early on that something is not quite right. One is left guessing what exactly it is that is out of kilter and I suppose the revelation does have some element of surprise. It's hardly a twist on the scale of The Crying Game, though.

Overall, the book was a good read. It managed to hold my interest but without being exceptional. I don't think I gained much insight into either Japan or the supernatural but at the same time, it was as good a way as any of passing a Sunday afternoon.

Astounding
This is the best book I have read so far this year (and it's December!). Similar in tone to Murakami; engaging, direct yet mystical. The story itself is not complex but its's delivered in a beautiful and mesmerising way. I didn't want the book to end, but when it did, it was perfect.