In a crumbling, seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet, seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk as her mother fusses over the off-season customers. When, one night, they are forced to eject a prostitute and a middle-aged man from his room, Mari finds herself drawn to the man's voice, in what will become the first gesture of a long seduction.
Mari begins to visit the mysterious man at his island home, and he initiates her into a dark realm of both pain and pleasure. As Mari's mother and the police begin to close in on the illicit affair, events move to a dramatic climax.
By the author ofThe Housekeeper and the Professor
Since 1988, Yoko Ogawa has written more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction, and has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared inTheNew Yorker,A Public Space, andZoetrope. Harvill Secker publishedThe Diving Pool, a collection of three novellas, in 2007 and her novelThe Housekeeper and the Professorin 2009.
A dark and beautifully written story of a young girl's tragic love triangle with an older man and his young nephew>
