NotLostJustWandering
Jul 21, 2011, 10:00 AM
I can't recommend too highly this excellent novel, which I recently finished. It's not just that the author is bisexual and that there are bi themes in the story; the novel can easily stand on its merits as a work of fiction.
Marina is in her first year of college when her father commits suicide. At a grief counseling group, she falls in love with Carolyn, her first female lover. When Carolyn decides to take a job teaching English in Japan, Marina goes along and insists the two find a home together. They soon find that living together in the rural backwater town where they've been placed has challenges they had never dreamed of.
The novel beautifully handles a stunningly wide range of topics: the woes of the expatriate in a drastically different culture, the challenges of living closeted, the rigidity vs. harmony of traditional culture, bullying, bereavement and the repression of grief, autism, polyamory and jealousy, and the complex mix of admiration of and misunderstanding of Western culture by the Japanese.
Marina is in her first year of college when her father commits suicide. At a grief counseling group, she falls in love with Carolyn, her first female lover. When Carolyn decides to take a job teaching English in Japan, Marina goes along and insists the two find a home together. They soon find that living together in the rural backwater town where they've been placed has challenges they had never dreamed of.
The novel beautifully handles a stunningly wide range of topics: the woes of the expatriate in a drastically different culture, the challenges of living closeted, the rigidity vs. harmony of traditional culture, bullying, bereavement and the repression of grief, autism, polyamory and jealousy, and the complex mix of admiration of and misunderstanding of Western culture by the Japanese.