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. . . .