I’ve taken this post from my personal blog and re-posted it in my company website as I strongly feel that good books need to be reviewed and recommended to book lovers!
The cover as well as the title of this book caught my attention when I was browsing for some thrillers at the Kinokuniya bookstore, KLCC, a few years ago. “Don’t judge a book by its cover!” — I guess most of you who is reading this review now would make a remark like that. But indeed the cover of this book does reflect on its content — it is a good read!
Publisher: Faber & Faber (January 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0571229719
ISBN-13: 978-0571229710
It was originally written by a Japanese author, Taichi Yamada, in 1986, and was translated into English in 2006. The story revolves around the protagonist named, Kasama Tsuneo, who is an immigration officer in Tokyo, who is struggling to lead a ‘normal life’. In the midst of one of his operations to catch the illegal immigrants, which led to a chase into a graveyard, which then led to a series of supernatural phenomenon, Tsuneo begins to hear a strange voice — a woman who is trying to contact him and Tsuneo began to search desperately for that woman. Along the way, it brought back a dark past of Tsuneo that happened in Portland, Oregon about 8 years ago — a secret that Tsuneo wished no one will ever know!
The story is quick paced and well-developed by Yamada, and I must also give credit to the translator, Michael Emmerich, whom have helped to reproduce the scenes so vividly from Japanese to English. The story is eerie in its own way, but somehow it managed to bring out the romantic feelings between Tsuneo and the woman that he’s searching for, portraying a sense of melancholic longing between them. Well, like usual, I must refrain from telling too much, to avoid spoiler… go read it yourself!
Inspiration Reach 