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If You Follow Me: A Novel
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About If You Follow Me: A Novel
From Publishers Weekly In Watrous's proficient debut, 22-year-old Marina and her girlfriend Carolyn are new residents in a quirky Japanese town where they teach English while learning their own lessons about gomi, or garbage disposal. Aside from the local obsession with trash, living in smalltown Shika is a welcome respite for Marina, who grapples with her father's suicide (he was indirectly responsible for her introduction to Carolyn; they met in a bereavement group), and although she hopes to move past his death during her year in Japan, he begins to feel more alive to her, as if his presence made the trip as well. Meanwhile, the peculiar absurdities of being a stranger in a strange land abound (how does one properly dispose of a refrigerator?), and though this tale of culture shock, growing up, and throwing out isn't especially distinguished from its fish-out-of-water peers, it does the trick as a diversion. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product Description “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 WifeIn Malena Watrous' beautifully wrought and deftly written debut novel, we meet Marina, a young woman who has come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. For her, Shika is more than just her home as a “temporary person.” It’s also an attempt to escape the reality that has followed her since her father committed suicide only a year earlier. Marina is a big city girl is in a small town filled with off-beat characters, including an ambitious town matchmaker, a dentist looking for free English lessons, a high school student who idolizes Western rap artists, and finally Marina’s America-obsessed supervisor, Hiro, a town leader whose friendship teaches her more than she ever expected.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 that explores the tension of being the outsider in an intimate community and the joy in finding that human nature is the same everywhere. From Booklist Poor Marina. Her job as an English teacher in Japan isn’t exactly what she expected. She’s been assigned to a remote rural region, where her she lives in a small, dingy apartment, and her students run the gamut from the quirky to the perverse. It doesn’t help matters that she and her significant other, Carolyn, who is also a teacher, are having problems. (Each realizes—too late—that the foreign surroundings and circumstances have placed too much stress on their relatively new relationship.) A well-meaning administrator named Miyoshi does his best to help Marina navigate her way through difficult days. He benefits from the relationship, too; he’s able to practice his English. Marina soon grows fond of Miyoshi. Are her feelings for him simple gratitude for his kindness or something more? Debut author Watrous, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, renders lively prose and memorable characters (there’s a macho Japanese student athlete with an Afro, bronzed skin, and bling), but the outsider theme becomes somewhat repetitive over the novel’s 300-plus pages. --Allison Block 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, bestselli
