The Earthquake Bird - Hardcover

Jones, Susanna

3.42

1,875 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330485016 ISBN 13: 9780330485012

Publisher: Picador, 2001

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A highly collectible first edition, protected in a new brodart wrapper.\n\nA haunting psychological crime novel. The Earthquake Bird is a debut which has caused an international sensation pre-publication. "Early this morning, several hours before my arrest, I was woken up by an earth tremor. I mention the incident not to suggest that there was a connection - that somehow the fault lines in my life came crashing together in the form of couple of policemen - for in Tokyo we have a quake like this every month. I am simply relating the sequence of events as it happened. It has been an unusual day and I would hate to forget anything..." So begins this chilling novel set in Japan which reveals a murder on its first page and takes its readers into the mind of the chief suspect, Lucy Fly - a young, vulnerable English girl living and working in Tokyo as a translator.

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Review:

Penzler Pick, August 2001: A bestseller in England, Susanna Jones's first novel is one of those books that grips you while you read and stays with you long after you've finished.

Lucy Fly is an English woman working as a translator in Tokyo. When the story opens she has been arrested for the murder of another English woman, Lily Bridges, whose partial remains have just been found. As Lucy is interrogated, she tells of her childhood in Yorkshire, her ability with languages, and her escape from her drab life to the relative anonymity of living in Japan. She also talks about her friendships: with the Japanese women with whom she works and sometimes socializes; with Teiji, a photographer with whom she is having an affair; and with Lily, who comes from the same part of Yorkshire as Lucy and who reminds Lucy of everything she is trying to escape.

And yet Lucy is drawn to Lily. Lily is working as a bartender, but in England she was a nurse and, when the two of them go on a hike together and Lucy is hurt, she is made comfortable by Lily's attentions. Even as we listen to Lucy, we feel that she may be hiding something from us. She doesn't tell us a great deal about her affair with Teiji, for instance. In fact, she admits that she doesn't remember much of their conversations, although she tells us that they must have talked a lot since she knows so much about him. Also disconcerting is her strange habit of lapsing into the third person when talking about herself.

As she reveals what she knows to the police--and to the reader--they, and we, become increasingly uncomfortable. The more we know about Lucy, the less we understand about her relationships with Teiji and Lily. When we finally do understand some of what she is saying, we are shocked.

This little gem of a book is a startlingly good debut. --Otto Penzler

About the Author:

The release of this trade title ties in to the publication of the author's new hardcover, Waterlily (Mysterious Press, 3/03). Susanna Jones lives in Brighton, England.

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