It was very very good. A bit lugubrious at the beginning, but then Pywell hits a very beautiful linguistic stride. Lots of Japanese thought in it, very intriguingly presented. A bit of imaginative time/thought travel, which I loved. I knew Sharon quite well way back in the day, when she often announced that she wanted to write The Great American novel, along the lines of Bonfire of the Vanities. We were both involved with a Japanese cooking school; she was married to someone in it, and I was an apprentice there.

Her book is nothing like Bonfire (thankfully) and was the first of four novels that she has written. I will def read the others, but they, unlike this first one published in 2006, are not in my local library.

Recommended reading for sure!