If You Follow Me
A Novel
Published on 15. March 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-0-06-173285-0 (ISBN)
Description
And so begins "If You Follow Me" and Marina's lessons in 'gomi' (garbage) law, Japanese culture, and the workings of Shika, the small, rural Japanese town in which she is teaching English for one year. For recent college grad Marina, Shika becomes more than just her home as a 'temporary person'. It's also an attempt to escape the bleak reality that has followed her every day since her father committed suicide only a year earlier. But as Marina comes to realise, in Japan, you can never really throw away your past. For a young woman who has fled to another country to try and outpace her grief, this comes to have a profound meaning. Part coming-of-age, part fish-out-of-water story, "If You Follow Me" is seeped in the tension of being the outsider in an intimate community and the joy in finding that human nature is the same everywhere.
Marina is a big city girl in a small town filled with off-beat characters including an ambitious town matchmaker, a dentist looking for free English lessons, a high school student imitating Western rap artists with his own afro and addiction to self-tanning lotion, and finally Marina's America-obsessed supervisor, Hiro, a town leader whose connection with Marina teaches her more than she ever expected. In keeping with the Japanese tradition of honoring the seasons in art and writing, "If You Follow Me" is split into four sections: Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer. Through each season, debut author Malena Watrous' gorgeous writing is on display as she guides readers over the cultural bridges her exquisitely drawn characters must cross to understand each other. "If You Follow Me" is a dark comedy of manners and ultimately a strange kind of love story that marks the beginning of a wonderful new career.
Marina is a big city girl in a small town filled with off-beat characters including an ambitious town matchmaker, a dentist looking for free English lessons, a high school student imitating Western rap artists with his own afro and addiction to self-tanning lotion, and finally Marina's America-obsessed supervisor, Hiro, a town leader whose connection with Marina teaches her more than she ever expected. In keeping with the Japanese tradition of honoring the seasons in art and writing, "If You Follow Me" is split into four sections: Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer. Through each season, debut author Malena Watrous' gorgeous writing is on display as she guides readers over the cultural bridges her exquisitely drawn characters must cross to understand each other. "If You Follow Me" is a dark comedy of manners and ultimately a strange kind of love story that marks the beginning of a wonderful new career.
Reviews / Votes
"I love, love, love IF YOU FOLLOW ME. It's fearlessly honest, occasionally heartbreaking, and extremely funny, and I can't recommend it highly enough." -- Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of PREP and AMERICAN WIFE "[A] deft, funny, and emotionally acute first novel...Watrous's book crackles with atmospheric detail and sharp dialogue, and tells a vivid story of an American confronting grief and self-knowledge in an unfamiliar place." -- Boston Globe "Graceful, smart, and filled with wonder, If You Follow Me is a heartfelt delight from beginning to end." -- Michelle Richmond, bestselling author of The Year of Fog "In this beautiful novel, what is most "foreign" to Marina turns out to be her complex relationships with those she thought she knew best. Malena Watrous's writing is sharp-edged and generous, tragic and true. I would follow her anywhere." -- Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House "If You Follow Me is the kind of book you finish and then clutch to your heart as you run around telling everyone you know that they have to read it. Watrous has written a book of great genuine warmth, startling honesty, and remarkable power." -- Thisbe Nissen, author of Osprey Island "This tragicomic debut novel spunky, feminist and perpetually wrong-footed college grad as she spends four seasons in rural Japan escaping the memory of her father's suicide." -- Ms. magazine "[C]onfident and heartfelt, a finely sketched reminder of the ways in which new loves are like new countries...If You Follow Me will charm all readers who have ever fumbled, offended, raged, and had their hearts broken in a foreign land." -- San Francisco magazine "A smart, comic first novel." -- New York Times Book Review "Her writing is direct and conversational. And she is able to deliver an excruciating portrayal of Marina's internal struggles." -- Eugene Register-GuardMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
483 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-06-173285-0 (9780061732850)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Malena Watrous's short fiction has appeared in Story Quarterly, Glimmer Train, Triquarterly, The Massachusetts Review, and Kyoto Journal. The winner of the Michener-Copernicus Award, she lives in San Francisco.