- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial (Mar 1 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0061732850
- ISBN-13: 978-0061732850
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 14.8 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #307,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“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-Guard )
“[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-Guard )
Book Description
Hoping to outpace her grief in the wake of her father's suicide, Marina has come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. But in Japan, as she soon discovers, you can never really throw away your past . . . or anything else, for that matter.
If You Follow Me is at once a fish-out-of-water tale, a dark comedy of manners, and a strange kind of love story. Alive with vibrant and unforgettable characters—from an ambitious town matchmaker to a high school student-cum-rap artist wannabe with an addiction to self-tanning lotion—it guides readers over cultural bridges even as it celebrates the awkward, unlikely triumph of the human spirit.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
beautifully written tale of of a young foreign woman in a small Japanese town, Mar 22 2010
By Carrie Dunham-LaGree "nomadreader" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: If You Follow Me: A Novel (Paperback)
Great literature transcends its characters and plot and brings greater understanding and critical thought, and If You Follow Me is that kind of great literature. It's mostly the story of Marina, who is spending her first year out of college teaching college in rural Japan. She's still dealing with her father's suicide, and her girlfriend, Carolyn, is also teaching in Japan. They're the only foreigners in a small, rural town with a nuclear power plant. They live in the only apartment available for two people.Watrous did an amazing job of translating the experience of teaching in rural Japan to the reader. The novel opens with the first of what will be many letters informing Marina of her violations of gomi law. The Japanese have a complex system of recycling, burning and disposing of their trash on different days, in different places and with different means. Instantly, I was as dumbfounded and embarrassed as Marina was for her inevitable and unintentional rudeness and violation of law. Perhaps the greatest cultural insults are the ones we commit when we don't even think to ask, such as how to sort our garbage.
Although the novel is told from Marina's point of view, it's brilliance is in the reader's ability to see the story not only through Marina's eyes, but also from the perspectives of the other characters, major and minor, and to truly understand each subtle moment from multiple sides. Many authors use multiple narrators to introduce readers to other points of view, but Watrous weaves language barriers, cultural misunderstanding and the human emotions beautifully into a coherent whole, and Marina still has a strong enough presence to feel like a friend from the novel's first pages. It's a testament to her skill as both a writer and a storyteller that this reader could so easily and quickly understand the perspective of those who have never ventured away from this small town in rural Japan.
Perhaps it's not a novel for everyone. It's not a sentimental tale of teaching English in a foreign land and bridging cultural gaps. It is, however, among the most honest and thoughtful novels I've read in a very long time. If you're a fan of language, cultural divides, and people watching, then you'll probably love it.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A STORY OF COURAGE AND DISCOVERY, Mar 14 2010
By Ann "Ann" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
In IF YOU FOLLOW ME, Watrous writes about people we all know; hers is a story of self discovery in which the reader shares. In many outsider novels, there is the 'other' and then there is the 'known.' In FOLLOW, there is no 'other.'Though Watrous had me laughing so hard I dropped my book on several occasions, it was often a bittersweet kind of laughter - not "ha, ha, ha." Bittersweet because the writing is so honest. The character of the Japanese supervisor and English teacher is one of my favorite characters in all of literature. His "Japlish" letters are unconventional to say the least, but his affection for his students and for Marina in particular made me love him all the more. You'll meet other Japanese characters in FOLLOW that will seem more familiar than foreign - in particular a first grade boy whose relationship with his autistic brother is complicated but oh so human.
I ordered this book from Amazon this week and finished it almost overnight. I could not attend to anything else. It's that kind of story. Read it. You won't regret it.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious and compelling debut, Mar 29 2010
By Bowie Creason - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: If You Follow Me: A Novel (Paperback)
I couldn't put this book down!From the novel's very first letter detailing Miss Marina's culturally improper trash habits to its moving ending with the heroine alone by the sea, If You Follow Me takes the traditional novel of manners and turns it on its head. In many ways, Watrous' writing reminded me of a cross between Jane Austen and Edith Wharton: coincidence, misunderstandings, romance, and disguises abound. The dialogue is sharp and incredibly funny, and the characters are so real. And yet lurking beneath this well-executed, crowd-pleasing structure is a tremendous personal loss that gives the novel its depth, and puts Marina in the company of Countess Olenska and other literary heroines who face down tragedy.
I loved how recycling became a strangely apt metaphor for grief in the book, as Marina learns which things from the past she must throw away, and what will be incorporated into her new life. It's part of Watrous' noteworthy talent that she can take a mundane part of contemporary existence and illuminate it until it reflects back something we didn't know about ourselves. Looking forward to more by this author.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
