Product Description

After accident, illness, and the loss of his job and marriage, forty-eight-year-old Taura meets Mutsuko, setting his already derailed life even further off course. Their first encounter is, unseen, in an overcrowded hospital. It later transpires that the mysterious Mutsuko is in her late sixties, but when they next meet she is younger, in her forties, and the two seemingly fall in love. With Mutsuko's age decreasing each time they meet, however, time rapidly starts to run out for these two damaged souls. Short and enigmatic, Yamada's novel is a bold and disturbing exploration of love and loss.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120017 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
After working as a freelance scriptwriter and novelist, Taichi Yamada won the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for the best human-interest novel in Japan. His English-language debut, Strangers, was published in 2005. It was followed by In Search of a Distant Voice, described in The Times as 'a spellbinding, surreal story.'

Customer Reviews

Flying High
I really enjoyed Yamada's ghost story Strangers, so I was hoping this would be as good.
It is.
The two main characters are a bit damaged I would say, with the narrator being an exhausted businessman with a thankless homelife and 67 year old woman who decreases in her physical age throughout the story.
Both sleep with each other a lot, and this gets a bit uncomfortable when the woman reaches 17 and he is 48!
Dirty old sod!

The ending is heartbreaking, but you'll have to read it to know what I mean.

It's well-written, funny in places, and hardly flags at all.

Excellent

Good, but not as good as Strangers
I thought Strangers was a really great novel so I was keen to read this. It's not as haunting, memorable and vivid as his previous work, but it was interesting enough.

Unfortunately, Yamada's concept of a life lived backwards has been somewhat overshadowed by the filming and subsequent popularisation of Scott Fitzgerald's Life of Benjamin Button, but nevertheless there are some thought-provoking moments here.

What is perhaps more curious to me is the rather uncomfortable Japanese stereotypes that are reinforced by Yamada's writing: The Japanese man as so obsessed and defined by his work that his life becomes unbalanced, the sexual lust and fetish towards younger girls; it's all a bit overstated, although I expect Western writing is also riddled with similar stereotypes.

Still a good read though.

Disappointing
I really enjoyed STRANGERS, but have been disappointed by Taichi Yamada's subsequent books - IN SEARCH OF A DISTANT VOICE, and now this one.

The story follows a man who is pretty unhappy with this family and working life, and is simply treading water daily. He meets and becomes strongly attracted to a 67 year old woman, who he soon finds goes through regular transformations that each time make her appear physically younger.

One of my main complaints here is I felt that once the couple's relationship had been established, the narrative pretty much repeats itself several times over. The couple meet, the woman is another 10 years younger, they have a lot of sex, and then she disappears again.

As commented on in another review, things do become a little uncomfortable and slightly sleazy when the woman concerned reaches her early teens, and there is still an air of lust even when she reaches the age of 4 - although only hinted at, this was going slightly too far for my taste.

Worth a read, but I won't rush back to it.