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商品の説明
内容説明
Margaret is doing everything in her power to forget home. And Tokyo's exotic nightlife -- teeming with intoxicants, pornography, and three-hour love hotels -- enables her to keep her demons at bay. Working as an English specialist at Air-Pro Stewardess Training Institute by day, and losing herself in a sex- and drug-addled oblivion by night, Margaret represses memories of her painful childhood and her older brother Frank's descent into madness.
But Margaret's deliberate nihilism is thrown off balance as she becomes increasingly haunted by images of a Western girl missing in Tokyo. And when she becomes enamored of Kazu, a mysterious gangster, their affair sparks a chain of events that could spell tragedy for Margaret, in a city where it's all too easy to disappear.
From Publishers Weekly
Margaret, a 20-something Canadian, has fled to Tokyo to escape her past and now instructs aspiring stewardesses in "cabin-crew and airline interview English." By night, she numbs herself with drink and dangerous sex. Her story, as readers learn in alternating chapters, features an imploding family and a dangerously schizophrenic brother. Though Margaret is less than convincing as a narrator, her surreal Tokyo encounters propel the book: a barkeep who communicates with lines from Beatles songs, speakers in public bathrooms that broadcast flushing sounds, a rent-a-dog park, a Western slacker who gigs as a fake wedding minister. And, of course, the automated love hotels that Margaret frequents with a Japanese gangster. The plot lurches forward—Margaret becomes fixated on a missing Western girl, gets fired and hooks up with a man whose name she never learns before her roommate flees. There's redemption to be gained, but the fractured narrative feels like a string of bizarre moments. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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カスタマーレビュー
Amazon.com で最も参考になったカスタマーレビュー (beta)
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5件のカスタマーレビュー
6 人中、6人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
Excellent writing; fascinating setting; a generosity of heart
2006/9/19
形式:ペーパーバック|Amazonが確認した購入
I took my first look at the cover of my newly-arrived copy of Lost Girls, and was dismayed. It screamed Chick Lit, a genre that's definitely out of my demographic (and for the most part, out of my sphere of interest). That screaming pinkness, the Japanimation cartoon, the semi-lurid font... Did I really want to subject myself to yet another neurotic-woman/child-takes-on-the-world-of-work account?
Well, shame on Harper Perennial for making me judge a book by its cover (a huge issue these days, in my very humble opinion). If I hadn't held my nose and dived into the deceptively-designed thing, I would've missed an excellent reading experience.
This book is absolutely terrific. I loved it. LOVED it. There's not a word out of place, the main character is far more engaging than the average 20-something-on-her-own, and the insights into Japanese pop culture create a fascinating backdrop to a quirky, well-turned story. I'd been to Japan long ago, but I knew nothing of Love Hotels (the cover treatment predisposed me to think of them as squalid and furtive, not the truly interesting phenomenon that they are). I felt Hanrahan's descriptions of Tokyo, as seen by Margaret, were amazing and droll. Her character's obvious, skewed love for her adopted culture not only provided succinct pictures of a world that, to the average American, might exist in another semi-parallel galaxy, but elevated her coming-to-grips tale well above the usual "lost girl" saga. There is a generosity of heart here that is hard to find in run-of-the-mill Chick Lit.
Read this book. You'll enjoy it. Forgive the committee that designed the cover; they had far too narrow an audience in mind. Such limitations, so common in the big publishing houses these days, drive me mad; I sincerely hope Ms. Hanrahan does not lose readership because somebody designed Lost Girls to be read by the young. Good writing like this deserves more than one generation of readers. And a movie, too, if you ask me.
Susan O'Neill, author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam
Well, shame on Harper Perennial for making me judge a book by its cover (a huge issue these days, in my very humble opinion). If I hadn't held my nose and dived into the deceptively-designed thing, I would've missed an excellent reading experience.
This book is absolutely terrific. I loved it. LOVED it. There's not a word out of place, the main character is far more engaging than the average 20-something-on-her-own, and the insights into Japanese pop culture create a fascinating backdrop to a quirky, well-turned story. I'd been to Japan long ago, but I knew nothing of Love Hotels (the cover treatment predisposed me to think of them as squalid and furtive, not the truly interesting phenomenon that they are). I felt Hanrahan's descriptions of Tokyo, as seen by Margaret, were amazing and droll. Her character's obvious, skewed love for her adopted culture not only provided succinct pictures of a world that, to the average American, might exist in another semi-parallel galaxy, but elevated her coming-to-grips tale well above the usual "lost girl" saga. There is a generosity of heart here that is hard to find in run-of-the-mill Chick Lit.
Read this book. You'll enjoy it. Forgive the committee that designed the cover; they had far too narrow an audience in mind. Such limitations, so common in the big publishing houses these days, drive me mad; I sincerely hope Ms. Hanrahan does not lose readership because somebody designed Lost Girls to be read by the young. Good writing like this deserves more than one generation of readers. And a movie, too, if you ask me.
Susan O'Neill, author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam
4 人中、3人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
A universal message
2006/10/23
形式:ペーパーバック|Amazonが確認した購入
Catherine Hanrahan's debut novel Lost Girls and Love Hotels is the story of a stranger in a strange land. The stranger is Margaret, a young woman who teaches English (or English pronounciation) in a stewardess school and the strange land is Japan.
On surface this could be the story of any 20-something searching for identity, salving old wounds with sex and drugs. Dig a little deeper, however, and you see that there is much more than meets the eye. Like most young women who have absent fathers, distracted mothers, and emotionally disturbed siblings, Margaret thinks she is running away, but what she really is doing is finding a way to save herself, looking for love (albeit in all the wrong places), and soothing herself with drugs and sex. She is, after all, still trapped in childhood; an adult who still sucks her thumb in order to fall asleep.
When Margaret's lover, Kazu, asks her why she came to Japan, Margaret responds, "To be alone." Of course, he finds this response odd, and so she follows up with, "It's an easy place to be alone."
Is this book specifically about life in Japan? Could it not have been set anywhere? I would argue the latter, as it seems to me the message is universal. Anyone who has ever felt as though she were running away, will see herself in this book. Anyone who has lived on an edge waiting for death, will also. And those who have been lost and found--those who have lived despite all of the odds against them (instead of being the unfortunates whose remains are later found), will find the ending triumphant.
In a way, life in Japan destroys Margaret (and almost kills her) and as such, it allows her to be reborn: "I stand like a planet, the constellation of seeds radiating from me, spilling from my pockets. I see, as if for the first time, the quality of the air. Bluish light filtered through it. The sun, like a yolk hanging languorously behind the trees. The air with its giddy bite of anticipation. I breathe it in like anesthesia, but it doesn't put me to sleep. It wakes me up."
On surface this could be the story of any 20-something searching for identity, salving old wounds with sex and drugs. Dig a little deeper, however, and you see that there is much more than meets the eye. Like most young women who have absent fathers, distracted mothers, and emotionally disturbed siblings, Margaret thinks she is running away, but what she really is doing is finding a way to save herself, looking for love (albeit in all the wrong places), and soothing herself with drugs and sex. She is, after all, still trapped in childhood; an adult who still sucks her thumb in order to fall asleep.
When Margaret's lover, Kazu, asks her why she came to Japan, Margaret responds, "To be alone." Of course, he finds this response odd, and so she follows up with, "It's an easy place to be alone."
Is this book specifically about life in Japan? Could it not have been set anywhere? I would argue the latter, as it seems to me the message is universal. Anyone who has ever felt as though she were running away, will see herself in this book. Anyone who has lived on an edge waiting for death, will also. And those who have been lost and found--those who have lived despite all of the odds against them (instead of being the unfortunates whose remains are later found), will find the ending triumphant.
In a way, life in Japan destroys Margaret (and almost kills her) and as such, it allows her to be reborn: "I stand like a planet, the constellation of seeds radiating from me, spilling from my pockets. I see, as if for the first time, the quality of the air. Bluish light filtered through it. The sun, like a yolk hanging languorously behind the trees. The air with its giddy bite of anticipation. I breathe it in like anesthesia, but it doesn't put me to sleep. It wakes me up."
Recommended
2008/2/21
形式:ペーパーバック
Mags is a young American woman living in Tokyo. Back in the US her brother is a schizophrenic, her mom doesn't cope to well and her dad is dead. Mags has a lot of issues on her mind, and she tries to go through life by not thinking about what really matters. She ends up drinking, taking drugs and spending time in 3 hour love hotels to get away from it all. She is still a very touching heroine. I found the exotic world of sex, drugs, and wild characters and places that surround her only add to the sense of her being lost in an otherwordly place. Recommended.
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