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Strangers

Author: Taichi Yamada
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

23 reviews
Sales Rank: 3417

Media: Paperback
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.7

ISBN: 0571224377
EAN: 9780571224371
ASIN: 0571224377

Publication Date: January 5, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: This has suffered slight shelf / transportation wear.. Posted from Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England as soon as possible using Royal Mail. .

Also Available In:

•	Paperback - Strangers
•	Hardcover - Strangers
•	Paperback - Strangers
•	Paperback - Strangers

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Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

a haunting tale July 13, 2008
I bought this book and was not disappointed. For anyone who has lost a parent and longed for the chance to go back in time to be the child you once were without any of the adult cares you now have and to just see them, hold them once more perhaps tell them just how much you loved them and miss them then this is the book for you with a bittersweet twist at the end. A delightful engaging book.

2 out of 5 stars

Very disappointing July 13, 2008
I purchased this book as it had been recommended through Amazon because of other items I had purchased or owned. When it arrived, I started reading it right away, as I had read a lot of good reviews. It took me about 3 hours in total to get through the whole thing.... And frankly, I wish I could get those three hours of my life back! The characters lacked depth, the story was predictable, and nothing actually happens. The end is a total anti climax. The only reason I have given it two stars is because of the way it is written/translated- I find that the work of Japanese authors, when translated into English, reads beautifully.

2 out of 5 stars

Disappointing June 13, 2008
the first 80 pages or so of this book is pretty much summed up in the synopsis. As the story develops. i use this word loosely as there is not much development at all. the characterisation is poor ,not going into any great detail about the main character. (guy grew up in japan countryside , parents die , moved to city. its not hard to predict what will happen. there's meant to be a an emotional aspect to this book , for me it really did not come through. overall disappointing

4 out of 5 stars

Haunting Novella May 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I don't really think this can be classed as a novel, more of a chunky novella. Nevertheless it is a great find if you are into ghost stories with a distinctly cerebral edge, or Japanese literature in general, this reminding me very much of the work of the awesome Banana Yoshimoto.

This is an eerie story about the nature of solitude and friendship in a big city and how difficult it is to connect with people in a meaningful way. It has a wonderful air of creeping menace which intensifies into a fantastically horrifying crescendo.

It's not gory, it's not lightweight, it's a profound, tense, spine tinglingly well written story that is a really great read.

5 out of 5 stars

A mesmirising ghost story December 8, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Sometimes you pick up a book and find yourself so lost in the story that whenever you put it down -- if you can put it down -- that you find yourself thinking about it, and counting the hours, minutes, until you can resume reading it again.

When I initially picked up Taichi Yamada's Strangers, a slim volume with slightly too-large print, I had no idea what to expect from it. Little did I know the stranglehold it would have over me for the three days it took me to read. Every time I had to close the book, owing to my deep and abiding need for sleep during a hectic working week, I did so reluctantly. And every morning I'd wake up, a little knot of excitement in my tummy, knowing that this magical, haunting, little book was awaiting my eager eyes.

Paradoxically, as much as I could not wait to reach the final, chilling conclusion, I also did not want the story to end, and I admittedly dragged it out for at least a day longer than was truly necessary.

Strangers is one of those beguiling tales told in simple, hypnotic prose. The first person narrative by 48-year-old Harada, a depressed and slightly jaded TV scriptwriter living in Tokyo, is strangely addictive despite the sometimes clunky sentence structure and the not-quite-right dialogue littered with American slang (perhaps a fault of the translator rather than the author?)

The story opens with Harada admitting that life as a newly divorced man has left him a little cash-strapped. Unable to afford a nice home, he is now living in an apartment that was once his office. His aching loneliness is mirrored in the silence that surrounds him each night, the only resident in a seven-storey building on a busy traffic route. The silence unsettles him.

This unsettled feeling gets worse when he discovers he has a neighbour living on the third floor, an attractive 33-year-old woman, whom he suspects is as lonely as he is. They have a nodding acquaintance but Harada lacks the courage to ask her over for a drink. This creeping unease turns to shock when he finds out that his longtime collaborator, Mamiya, is going to marry his ex-wife. And just when you think things couldn't get worse, or the narrator couldn't possibly begin to feel any more confused or out-of-sorts, on a spontaneous visit to the suburb in which he grew up he runs into a man that looks exactly like his long-dead father.

From here on in, the story becomes slightly surreal and totally mesmirising, as Harada resumes contact with the parents that left him orphaned at the age of 12. His mother and father seem not to have aged since their deaths and he grapples with the realisation that a "thirty-something couple could not possibly be the parents of a 48-year-old man". Harada finds himself living in a kind of twilight world, unable to determine what is real and what is not...

At its most basic level Strangers is a ghost story, but the simple detached prose style belies a much deeper pyschological anaylsis of modern life and how the relationships between men and women, parents and children shape our personalities and our lives. While the core of the story is eerie and edgy, this is not a horror story but a very human tale about grief and longing. I found it enormously sad and know the mood -- and memory -- of this book will stay with me for a long, long time. If only every book I read was like this!