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Product Description
Product Description
Winner of the Japan Mystery Writers Award, Naoko is a black comedy of hidden minds and lives. Navigating the interstices between the real and the unreal with perfect plot twists, this page-turner is also a critique of gender relations by a male Japanese writer, one of their best-sellng.
An everyman, Heisuke works hard at a factory job to provide for his wife, Naoko, and young daughter, Monami. He takes pleasure from the small things, like breakfast with both of them after a night shift. His placid life is rocked when, looking up from his microwave dinner one evening, he realizes the TV news that he wasn't paying attention to is reporting a catastrophic bus accident and the names of his loved ones.
When Monami finally wakes from a coma, she seems to think she's Naoko, who has died protecting her daughter. More disturbingly, the girl knows things only Naoko could know. The family life that resumes between the modest man and a companion who looks like his daughter bu seems like his dead wife is ticklish-funny until it begins hurtling toward a soul-shattering end.
In addition to winning Japan's top mystery prize, Naoko inspired a blockbuster movie. Read this work, a match for the later Bunuel, to find out why Higashino is considered the most ambitious and versatile mystery hand at work in Japan.
An everyman, Heisuke works hard at a factory job to provide for his wife, Naoko, and young daughter, Monami. He takes pleasure from the small things, like breakfast with both of them after a night shift. His placid life is rocked when, looking up from his microwave dinner one evening, he realizes the TV news that he wasn't paying attention to is reporting a catastrophic bus accident and the names of his loved ones.
When Monami finally wakes from a coma, she seems to think she's Naoko, who has died protecting her daughter. More disturbingly, the girl knows things only Naoko could know. The family life that resumes between the modest man and a companion who looks like his daughter bu seems like his dead wife is ticklish-funny until it begins hurtling toward a soul-shattering end.
In addition to winning Japan's top mystery prize, Naoko inspired a blockbuster movie. Read this work, a match for the later Bunuel, to find out why Higashino is considered the most ambitious and versatile mystery hand at work in Japan.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
After reading Keigo Higashino's 'The Devotion of Suspect X', I hoped Naoko would also be equally intense and unpredictable. And it really doesn't disappoint. I absolutely enjoyed this intriguing novel, the premise of the story is unusual, but in Naoko Higashino has a flair for expressing the thoughts and emotions of his characters as they try to adapt to their strange predicament. It's a black comedy on the theme of death, mourning and marriage. It's a page tuner and I was hooked on finding out how it will would all end. Like Higashino's other works, just as I thought I had the ending all sussed out within the last few pages, upon finishing I could not have been further from the conclusion which was heart rendering and profound.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Once you get past the strange occurance of the main character's dead wife inhibiting the body of their eleven year old daughter, this book is absorbing and exciting. The complexities of dealing with grief, being happy his wife is alive but disappointed that their relationship can't be how it was before - provide a boiling pot of confusion, excitement and a chilling narrative.
I really enjoyed this book and I would love to read more by this author!
I really enjoyed this book and I would love to read more by this author!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful
An Interesting Tale
2 April 2005
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Naoko is a tale of metempsychosis--the transference of the mind or spirit of one person into the body of another. Heisuke Sugita is a blue color worker in Japan, assembling fuel injectors in an auto parts factory in suburban Tokyo. One morning while watching tv, he sees a news report about a bus accident near the sky resort town of Nagano. It takes several minutes before he realizes that it is the bus his wife Naoko and eleven year old daughter Monami were taking to visit relatives.
Naoko dies in the bus crash, while Monami is left in a coma. When Monami regains consciousness, she tells Heisuke she is Naoko, that the spirit of the mother has taken over the body of the daughter.
What follows are the social and psychological consequences of this apparently supernatural event, for Heisuke, and for Naoko/Monami. They decide to tell no one, to keep it a secret. In fact, the Japanese title of the book, Himitsu, means Secret. Once Heisuke becomes convinced that the metempsychosis is real, and permanent, he grieves because he has lost his daughter, while all those about him think he has lost his wife. For "Naoko" to maintain their secret, she must continue Monami's life as an elementary school student.
The author, Keigo Higashino, carefully and skillfully works out the logical consequences of this event. How would a married man, of normal sexual desires, deal with a situation where the spirit of his wife is inhabiting the body of his young daughter? Higashino does deal with the issue of conjugal relations, although briefly, and in a non-salacious way. Most of the book dwells on the development of Naoko/Monami, as she matures socially. In a sense, it is answering the question, what would you do if you were a middle aged housewife, and you suddenly and unexpectedly got to live your life over again, from the age of eleven? What would you do differently? Could you, in fact, correct your life's mistakes? Could you become a better person? And in a question fraught with tragedy and irony, what do you do when your husband is now, physically, your father?
I read this book in two days. My basic impression is that it is interesting and thoughtful. It's not exciting, it's not gripping, but it is satisfying. Not a great book, but a pretty good book. Worth buying, if you like that kind of thing.
One quibble: The English translation, by Kerim Yasar, consistently writes "all right" as "alright." Perhaps this was done to reflect Heisuke's lack of education, paralleling something in the underlying Japanese, but it's jarring, and ineffective.
Naoko dies in the bus crash, while Monami is left in a coma. When Monami regains consciousness, she tells Heisuke she is Naoko, that the spirit of the mother has taken over the body of the daughter.
What follows are the social and psychological consequences of this apparently supernatural event, for Heisuke, and for Naoko/Monami. They decide to tell no one, to keep it a secret. In fact, the Japanese title of the book, Himitsu, means Secret. Once Heisuke becomes convinced that the metempsychosis is real, and permanent, he grieves because he has lost his daughter, while all those about him think he has lost his wife. For "Naoko" to maintain their secret, she must continue Monami's life as an elementary school student.
The author, Keigo Higashino, carefully and skillfully works out the logical consequences of this event. How would a married man, of normal sexual desires, deal with a situation where the spirit of his wife is inhabiting the body of his young daughter? Higashino does deal with the issue of conjugal relations, although briefly, and in a non-salacious way. Most of the book dwells on the development of Naoko/Monami, as she matures socially. In a sense, it is answering the question, what would you do if you were a middle aged housewife, and you suddenly and unexpectedly got to live your life over again, from the age of eleven? What would you do differently? Could you, in fact, correct your life's mistakes? Could you become a better person? And in a question fraught with tragedy and irony, what do you do when your husband is now, physically, your father?
I read this book in two days. My basic impression is that it is interesting and thoughtful. It's not exciting, it's not gripping, but it is satisfying. Not a great book, but a pretty good book. Worth buying, if you like that kind of thing.
One quibble: The English translation, by Kerim Yasar, consistently writes "all right" as "alright." Perhaps this was done to reflect Heisuke's lack of education, paralleling something in the underlying Japanese, but it's jarring, and ineffective.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Emotionally gripping, thoughtful story
2 Nov 2005
Format:Paperback
I was surprised I had such a visceral reaction to the story, and strongly recommend this book. The story is very deep, and the events made me think all the time about myself and the characters. This would be a great book club book because it makes you think about and want to discuss your personal relationships, your own emotions and feelings, and how you would handle situations in the book.
The characters and what happens to them brought out very real emotions in me. I unconsciously made faces as I reacted to what was happening. This was one of those books that really touched me and I can't recommend it enough. I feel like I have had, or could have, the same feelings and fears that are displayed in this book. That helped me identify with the characters and I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a deep, personal, and very interesting story.
The characters and what happens to them brought out very real emotions in me. I unconsciously made faces as I reacted to what was happening. This was one of those books that really touched me and I can't recommend it enough. I feel like I have had, or could have, the same feelings and fears that are displayed in this book. That helped me identify with the characters and I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a deep, personal, and very interesting story.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Amazing mystery
19 Sep 2007
Format:Paperback
In the vein of Murakami, Naoko's author revealed a world that is not quite real, but is decidedly on the brink of Japanese change. Welcome a bus accident and switching of personalities and, well, the mystery develops from there. I can't wait for the next book by this author!
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