Now a feature film starring Alexandra Daddario

An achingly honest debut novel of memory, self-destruction, and relationships set in contemporary Tokyo

Sometimes, when I'm staring down a room of Japanese stewardesses-in-training, looking across a sea of shiny black coifs, a chorus line of stockinged legs, knees together, toes to the side, when I'm chanting, "Sir, you are endangering yourself and other passengers " I think I should have let my brother stab me . . .

Margaret is doing everything in her power to forget home. And Tokyo's red light district--teeming with intoxicants, pornography, and seedy love hotels--is almost enough to keep at bay memories of her brother Frank's descent into schizophrenia. But sobriety brings the past flooding back, along with a pervasive fear that she, too, is destined to battle mental illness.

Working as an English specialist at a training academy for Japanese stewardesses by day, and losing herself at night in drugs, alcohol, and S&M fueled sex in the arms of anonymous men, Margaret numbs her loneliness with self destruction, wondering when she'll take things too far. And when she falls for a married man who is part of Tokyo's illicit underworld, their relationship might finally force her hand. . . .

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 07/03/2006
ISBN: 9780060846848
Pages: 207
Weight: 0.41lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.36w x 0.60d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 05/01/2006 pg. 37
Kirkus Best Books 05/01/2006 pg. 6
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2006 pg. 485