The Earthquake Bird - Susanna Jones

Ambiguous feeling. That is how I felt almost all through "The Earthquake Bird", unsure of what to make of a book with poor style, lame plot, and stereotypical characters, on top of a plain and simplistic image of Tokyo. I was unsure because I was expecting the book to pull off a twist, a surprise, something that would give meaning to the story. But no, it basically ends up in a long and sad whimper that leaves the reader with the feeling of having been had.

It all goes around Lucy, a person which I have the feeling Susanna Jones wants us to infer has some  kind of mental illness or developmental disorder, who works as a translator in Japan and has a weird sexual relationship with a guy that works at a noodles shop and also moonlights as a photographer for himself. When one day a woman from her own part in England appears lost and in need of help in Tokyo, a friend of Lucy asks her to help this new expat arrival.

I think Jones was trying to make some kind of meta-metaphorical analysis of being abroad, what makes you leave your 'roots' (cough cough) and want to see new places, and stay there, and how this changes you till you become someone who doesn't belong anywhere, unsure, without attachments, without a way to connect, and how Japan seems to be a particularly good place to some particular kind of foreigner (at least in the time frame in which the novel is set). And she decided to make it some kind of murder mystery to sell it better.

However, she fails miserable. The depiction of Japan and Japanese people (or Tokyo) is really shallow and poor. The depiction of being fish-out-of-water also fails. And the mystery is... non-existent. And Lucy (and Teiji and Lily; heck anyone) makes little sense as a character, her decisions head-scratching-ly stupid and pointless. She seems to be on a mission to make herself miserable, but just for the sake of the plot, because we are given little reason to understand the decisions she takes in order to destroy her life in Tokyo. And the lame 'kind-of-happy' ending...

Bad.

The good: the ambiguous atmosphere; you can read it in one afternoon

The bad: luckily for you it can be read fast, because it is kind of pointless; the characters are totally basic, the plot is totally basic; some developments make zero sense; the listless description of life in Tokyo (it could be anywhere; just putting some Japanese names don't a place make); the resolution (or not)

Alternatives: For another look on Japan, with some mystery thrown into it (or the other way around), let's try Natsuo Kirino, Yusuke Kishi, Miyabe Miyuki, Kyōtarō Nishimura... The list is endless

4/10

(English)