Backer, Sara

Average customer rating:

Sucked me in...
Satisfactory expat tale
I loved it
Doggerel
couldn't get it out of my mind

American Fuji
Sara Backer
Manufacturer: Berkley Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 042518336X

Amazon.com

Since the late 1970s, young Americans have made their way to Japan to teach English, pay off student loans, and generally have a good time. A happy byproduct of this exodus has been the American-in-Japan novel. The comic possibilities of the form are obvious: bumbling foreigner tries to learn the customs of the inscrutable East. In American Fuji, first-time novelist Sara Backer hits all the comic notes, but takes the time to examine the very real allure of living in another culture.

Gaby Stanton, fired from her job as a university professor in provincial Shizuoka, has a gig selling fantasy funerals to the dying Japanese rich. Her job puts her in the path of Alexander Thorn, a middle-aged American who has just arrived in Japan determined to decipher the mystery surrounding the death of his son, an exchange student. The perspective of the novel shifts back and forth between these two characters as Gaby and Alexander stumble on a yakuza ring, unearth medical secrets, and sprout romantic feelings for each other. The two gradually develop a Hepburn-Tracy-style combative relationship. Still, Backer's sympathies clearly lie with Gaby, a thirtysomething woman with health problems who relishes her automatic outsider status in Japan. If everything she does is strange to her host culture, then her illness doesn't matter. But the introduction of Alexander is a wise move, allowing Backer to show us Japan through the perpetually startled eyes of a newcomer.

While the writing sometimes falls short of grace, Backer has an infallible sense of the kind of detail that brings Japan alive. She has no qualms about taking a page to explain how, say, Japanese banking works, and her confidence in her material makes the novel fly. The book is given surprising depth by the two main characters. Both are discontented with their lot, and neither is at all traditionally appealing. (Of Alexander, Backer writes, "He had the face of a man who could win the election, but not this year.") By giving us such warty characters in such an oddball setting, Backer has fashioned a novel with some real staying power. --Claire Dederer

Book Description

Gaby Stanton, an American professor living in Japan, has lost her job teaching English at Shizuyama University. (No one will tell her exactly why.) Alex Thorn, an American psychologist, is mourning his son, a Shizuyama exchange student who was killed in an accident. (No one will tell him exactly how.) Alex has come to this utterly foreign place to find the truth, and now Gaby is serving as his translator and guide. The key to mastering Japanese, she keeps telling him, is understanding what's not being said. And in this "deft and delightful" (Karen Joy Fowler) novel, the unsaid truths about everything from work and love to illness and death cast a deafening silence-and tower in the background like Mount Fuji itself.

"Clever." (New York Times Book Review)

"Highly entertaining." (Publishers Weekly)

"Sharp, quirky details...an appealing read." (Newsday)

"Succeeds brilliantly in capturing the fugitive charms and mysteries of this extraordinary society." (Simon Winchester, bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman)

"Japan itself is the comic hero of American Fuji...sweet and funny, sad and inspiring." (Detroit Free Press)

Download Description

"""Expect the unexpected. This is Japan."" That's Gaby Stanton trying to explain to Alex Thorn why his questions about the mysterious death of his son, an exchange student at a small Japanese university, are likely to go unanswered. But those words could also serve as the leitmotif for this exuberantly funny tale of Americans abroad in modern-day Japan. After five years in Japan, Gaby herself has learned to expect the unexpected. Fired from her university position for no reason, she has taken the only job available to her: selling fantasy funerals to the Japanese. And because the firm she works for shipped Cody Thorn's body home, Alex has turned up on her doorstep, looking for answers. What ensues is a wild ride through the manners, mores, and prejudices of the Japanese. Peopled with a cast of ill-assorted exiles from the West and with Japanese from every walk of life, American Fuji is many novels in one: a teasing mystery; a quest that is alternatively slapstick and tender; a revealing Baedeker to contemporary Japan; and a delightfully sophisticated romantic comedy. It is indeed about expecting the unexpected in a world where appearances are not all that they seem. "

Customer Reviews:

Sucked me in..........2006-11-22

I got this new job where I am working overnight shifts (11P-7A) and by proxy have refound my long lost love: reading.

I got through nearly 260pg. of this book last night and can't WAIT to get to work to finish it up... I'm engrossed with Gaby, Alex, Eguchi... At the moment, I want to spit in Lester's face... I have been drawn in and can't put it down.

AWESOME!

Satisfactory expat tale.......2006-08-11

This isn't a bad book, as the one who labeled it "doggeral" states, but it isn't life altering, either. The characters are thinly drawn and the plot has some frustrating run-arounds that seem like contrivances. The ending is satisfactory and inspired and there are plenty of gaijin references that would most likely be missed by folks who have never spent significant time here. These are funny and bring up feelings of understanding from those of us who know Japan and, to be honest, made this book more interesting than it might be to others.
This is an easy read and a pleasant fiction piece that, while it won't fill you with complex philosophical jewels, will engage you while you're riding on the JR.

I loved it.......2005-08-30

AMERICAN FUJI is a great read--I feel like I have just returned from a long vacation to Japan. Sara Backer captures the Japanese culture and helps me understand it. From the fascinating funeral director who only speaks English in Beatles' song lyrics to the lame female secretary who secretly rebels against rigid Japanese society, the story kept me reading and pleasantly surprised on every page. I recommend it to anyone~

Doggerel.......2005-04-30

Truly horrible. I very rarely do this, but I felt compelled to launch this mess into the trash. Full of bigotry, anger, frustration, gross mischaracterizations, misrepresentations, and envy, this book was clearly an act of theraputic lashing out by an older foreign woman who felt isolated and unattractive while living overseas. Not a good reason to write a book. The unimpressive writing style could have been overlooked if not for the offensive tone. Not everyone is suited to life in a different culture, and there are those foreigners living in Japan who spend most of their time carping about everything and never move past that stage in the assimilation process. The author seems to have been of just such ilk. Perhaps most problematic about this kind of writing is that many people who do not have first-hand knowledge of life in Japan may swallow all of the author's bile whole and uncritically and her negativity will be transmitted like a virus. I absolutely recommend against going anywhere near this mess.

couldn't get it out of my mind.......2004-09-20

two years ago i picked this up at *&* (another bookstore) to read while waiting for someone. i got about 1/3 through it then had to go. i wanted to finish it so checked the library - our library system didn't own it, wouldn't buy it, and never could manage to ILL it for me. so i just gave up. but over time, i couldn't get the story out of my head - what happened? of course, each time i went back, i would look for it, but by then i had forgotten both title and author.

last month i couldn't stand not knowing, so i did some searches on amazon and found it after some tedium. finally, i was able to finish it! definitely worth the time to find. i loved the characters - i didn't find any of them truly evil, even the Big Bad Baddie was understandable from his point of view - and some, like Gabi's boss Eguchi, were surprisingly multifaceted. it was a nice balance of mystery and characters and setting.

i LOVED the ending. it was exactly as it should be. no hollywood ending here. i'll be looking for more by this author, set in japan or not.

Average customer rating:

American Fuji
Sara Backer
Manufacturer: Penguin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NBVZ3C

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