Wayne P. Lammers, Japanese-English Translator
Strangers
by Taichi Yamada.
Faber and Faber, 2005. ISBN 0571224369
Vaguely depressed since his recent divorce, middle-aged TV scriptwriter Harada decides to visit Asakusa one day, the neighborhood where he'd lived as a child until his parents were killed in a traffic accident. There he meets a couple who are the spitting image of his parents when they died, and they treat him as their son--except that they are now perhaps ten years his junior. The experience is both eerie and comforting, and Harada finds himself returning time and again to the couple's apartment for another dose of warmth and nostalgia...until the woman he has just begun seeing realizes that something is terribly wrong...
by Taichi Yamada.
Faber and Faber, 2005. ISBN 0571224369
Vaguely depressed since his recent divorce, middle-aged TV scriptwriter Harada decides to visit Asakusa one day, the neighborhood where he'd lived as a child until his parents were killed in a traffic accident. There he meets a couple who are the spitting image of his parents when they died, and they treat him as their son--except that they are now perhaps ten years his junior. The experience is both eerie and comforting, and Harada finds himself returning time and again to the couple's apartment for another dose of warmth and nostalgia...until the woman he has just begun seeing realizes that something is terribly wrong...
Strangers
by Taichi Yamada
Vertical, 2003.
The translation was first published by Vertical in 2003. This edition is now out of print.
by Taichi Yamada
Vertical, 2003.
The translation was first published by Vertical in 2003. This edition is now out of print.
Reviews
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Heartland Reviews
heardlandreviews.com |
" What a touching novel!!!.... The ending has some unexpected twists, which will grab the reader's emotions and yank them like a chain... His storyline is so poignant, so emotional, it will have you hoping every character will come out ahead. The author is famous for having redefined Japanese TV drama to the better. This book is a clear indication as to why. We rated it a high five hearts."
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Midwest Book Review
midwestbookreview.com |
"Hauntingly told, with a sublimely subtle undercurrent to the tides of emotion, Strangers is an unforgettable journey through memories and the inner striving to reach out and contact others. "
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Bret Easton Ellis,
author of American Psycho |
"An eerie ghost story written with hypnotic clarity: quickly-paced, intelligent, and haunting with passages of acute psychological insight into the relationship between children and their parents, which is also what makes this fascinating book so moving. He is among the best Japanese writers I have read."
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Sonia O'Regan
in The Daily Yomiuri |
"[A] simple, genuinely surprising ghost story... [Yamada] plays on the readers' emotions, drawing them into the story the same way his otherworldly characters fixate Harada. By the time the reader's fascination has turned to fear, and amusement to disgust, one is committed to the characters and compelled to read on to the climax of this satisfyingly spooky little story."
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Donald Richie
in The Japan Times |
"Taichi Yamada knows a lot about make-believe worlds and their sway over the "real" one. He is thus able to create a subtext for his ghost-story novel... Both novel and movie might be read as exercises in nostalgia were it not for the sadness that so informs both, and the knowledge that the past can kill. This lifts the work into something near metaphysics -- that branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. "
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The Asian Reporter
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"A well-written novel that subtly raises perplexing questions like a laidback psychological thriller, then eggs on curious readers like a good mystery page-turner... Strangers offers the States a glimpse of its own forgotten past: the art--yes, art--of horror from an age when a good story instead of kill counts and gore defined the genre."
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Rick Kleffel,
The Agony Column trashotron.com |
"Quick, slick and filled with nice wordsmithing by the writer and the translator, 'Strangers' brings cloying emotions into the world of terrorizing fiction... Readers of 'Strangers' will be hard pressed not to play out the novel as a movie, and if someone doesn't snap this up and produce it, well, then they're as stupid as we all think they are. Whoever they are. 'Strangers' is a tightly written and taut novel, the kind you'll grip between sweating hands as you finish it off in a day or so. "
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BookReview.com
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"Rating: Excellent!... Strangers is an intriguing ghost story with a twist at the end. It is touching and unnerving at the same time. Taichi Yamada's writing style is refreshing and embracing, drawing you into Harada's story."
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