Ranald MacDonald Book

I first encoutered John David Morely's novel Pictures From The Water Trade (1985) in a quotation from it that appeared in Allan Booth's very personalized Japan guidebook, Japan: Land of Myths and Legends. At first I thought it was a memoir, but when the copy arrived the book jacket had praise for the novel from the likes of Anne Tyler, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian Buruma. I suspect that the two authors may have been acquaintances-what are the odds of two Englishman writers living in Tokyo in the 80s not knowing each other? No matter, I did enjoy Morely's novel and it is one the better novels I have read set in Japan. Recently this issue came up on a social media site and I conceded with the original poster that a "great" novel written in English had not yet been written. He was in the midst of reading a novel that he felt might earn those honors-Artuo Silva's Tokyo Whip-which I plan to read soon and offer up my own judgement. Yet several good novels have been written and I suggested another Englishman-David Peace's two novels Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City as my favorites. This book joins those books. That being said, its biggest deficits were the canned speeches put in characters mouths to explain certain aspects of Japanese culture. However, there is much to like about the novel including the stylistic language used by the author that is often funny and accurate.