- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Kodansha International Ltd; illustrated edition edition (1 Feb 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 4770025319
- ISBN-13: 978-4770025319
- Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 16.2 x 2.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 148,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
The Japan that is the setting for these stories is a very cosmopolitan place, peopled by a diverse array of characters who exemplify the extremes of a rapidly changing culture. A rich, spoiled woman takes numerous lovers to ruin her own reputation and thus avoid an arranged marriage; a sumo wrestler conducts a doomed love affair with his stablesmaster's wife; a man who is the last peddler of live goldfish left in the country wants to gain admission to a selective disco and meets a beautiful woman who hides a dark secret.
Through each of these tales runs a traditional Japanese ghost story. It's as if the world of modern Japan is not only seething with conflicting impulses toward new customs and the old, but is in fact a land of ghosts that freely intermingle with the inhabitants of this world. The people in Boehm's stories live in a world where the boundaries are quite fluid, and unseen things come straight into view and say the unspeakable. Characters in these stories suddenly find that all the people around them have an eggshell surface in place of a face, or that the beautiful naked woman standing outlined by the moonlight in the window of one's living room spends her days as a fox with brown fur and a bushy tail. Their lives are forever altered by their brief admission to these other realms. So the stories are suggestive of a broader world, while at the same time conveying a deep knowledge and fondness for Japan.
Ghost of a Smile follows in the tradition of Memoirs of a Geisha, Audrey Hepburn's Neck and Snow Falling on Cedars -- fiction by non-Japanese authors that assumes the voice and the point of view of Japanese characters.
From the Publisher
Advance praise for Ghost of a Smile:
"This book of love 'n' ghosts is brilliant, and funny, and kind. It's also very much alive, for while its ghosts are as old as the hills, their love lives are as fresh and juicy as today's persimmons." (Francis Huxley, author of The Dragon and The Eye)
Praise for A Zen Romance, a memoir by the same author:
"Her descriptions I drip with lush sensuality. She is one of the wittiest observers of the Japanese scene that I have read." (Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books)
"Boehm's witty prose is rich, evocative, and utterly convincing, giving the reader a nuanced yet seemingly spontaneous, frank record of her experiences. Boehm avoids the pitfall of trying to overawe us with Zen wisdom and instead gives us her own eloquent sense of elusive, fleeting Zen moments and her attempts to grasp the ungraspable." (Kirkus Reviews)
"Bursting with energy, this is a wonderful West-meets-and-falls-in-love-with-East story that is hard to put down." (Sasuga News and Reviews)
"Funny- entertaining and delightful- A great escape." (Kansai Time Out)
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Sometimes I imagine him walking these silent sloping streets in his beaver hat and caped greatcoat, trailing his long sepia-ink-stained fingers over the rough stone walls of embassy mansions and robber-baron estates. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Sometimes I imagine him walking these silent sloping streets in his beaver hat and caped greatcoat, trailing his long sepia-ink-stained fingers over the rough stone walls of embassy mansions and robber-baron estates. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Succulent
4 Mar 2001
Format:Hardcover
Ghost of a Smile is a delightful and spooky read. Each story paints a vivid new picture that revels in the country of Japan, its people and the transplants from the West who find themselves there. The main characters of each story have remained with me as distinct people (and ghosts), which is unique in the genre of short fiction. Deborah Boliver Boehme is a witty and incisive author who treats us to sensory delights and surprises in this entertaining tour across cultures and settings.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Imaginative!
18 July 2001
Format:Hardcover
In this collection of eight short stories, the author uses Japanese folklore, exotic settings, Americans abroad, love, and supernatural beings to create interesting, exciting, and fun reading. The characters are playful rather than serious, enabling the reader to quickly feel attached to them. On the way through each superbly crafted plot, are unexpected and rather unusual surprises. What great entertainment! Ghost of a Smile makes exploring short stories a pleasure.
Some of the best stories include one in which a coffee shop owner suspects something amiss with the patrons of a new restaurant ("The Undead of Uguisudani"), one in which a woman loses her lover and becomes enamored of a monk ("Hungry Ghosts in Love"), and one in which a shy librarian is affected by the aphrodisiac qualities imparted to her by a white snake ("The Snake Spell").
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Not what you'd expect
22 Feb 2001
Format:Hardcover
Debra Boliver Boehm's collection of supernatural tales, based mostly on Japanese folklore, are a welcome surprise. I do not like and do not read ghost stories and vampire stories. But these stories were so well written, so unique in their setting, so witty and satirical in their execution, that I read them one right after the other. They are connected by a common thread, the quest for true love or true identity within the main character of each story, and this lends power to the collection as a whole. This is a collection I hope people won't overlook.
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