Sayonara Bar - Softcover

Barker, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552772402 ISBN 13: 9780552772402

Publisher: Black Swan, 2006

Synopsis

The modern geisha-girl scene is explored in this edgy, commercial literary novel set in a hostess bar in Osaka.

Mary, a blond graduate from England, has drifted into a job in a hostess lounge in Osaka. She and other “economy geishas” are employed by the enigmatic Mama-san to spend their evenings flirting with rich Japanese salarymen, playing drinking games and taking turns in the karaoke booth. Mary is in love with Yuji, Mama-san’s handsome son. But Yuji’s loyalty is to the petty Yakuza gangster for whom he works. Watanabe, the introverted cook, watches Mary from the Sayonara’s kitchen. He exists in his own manga-fuelled fantasy of the fourth dimension, but when he perceives the danger of Mary’s growing obsession with Yuji, he resolves to protect her whatever the cost.

Mr. Sato works for the Daiwa Trading Corporation. Obsessive overwork cannot cover the emptiness of his solitary life. Lured against his will to the Sayonara Bar by his boss, he finds himself returning there to escape his dead wife’s ghost.

Sly and often very funny, Sayonara Bar spins a kaleidoscopic, genre-crossing tale of people cut adrift in a shrinking, globalized world.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Barker has a Chinese-Malay mother and an English father, and grew up in East London. She spent two years working in Japan following graduation. She has completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester University. Sayonara Bar is her first novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

British author Barker's piquant debut chronicles the life of Mary, a young Englishwoman working as a hostess at the Sayonara Bar in Osaka, Japan. Though not a prostitute, Mary is paid an hourly wage to flirt and converse with the bar's customers, primarily middle-aged Japanese businessmen. Her colleagues include Katya, a Ukrainian hostess, and Watanabe, the Sayonara's cook, who keeps a watchful eye over Mary and believes that he's an "intermediary between the third and fourth dimension." Barker precisely draws her characters, emphasizing their innermost thoughts and desires. Mr. Sato, a widower, has vivid dreams about his deceased wife even as he's attracted to Mariko, a bar hostess who claims to be conversing with his ghostly wife. As the tension builds among the characters, Yuji, Mary's boyfriend, is caught stealing from his boss. An enigmatic yet riveting climax brings this highly unusual view of Japanese society to a fitting close. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0552772402
• ISBN 13: 9780552772402
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 329