When Jane decides to leave her Wall Street job to join her husband Pete in Tokyo she unwittingly places herself on a trajectory that challenges her marriage, her career and risks her very life. This is her emotional journey of love, betrayal, hope and disillusionment. A family’s secret atrocities and treachery are revealed amid the
When Jane decides to leave her Wall Street job to join her husband Pete in Tokyo she unwittingly places herself on a trajectory that challenges her marriage, her career and risks her very life. This is her emotional journey of love, betrayal, hope and disillusionment. A family’s secret atrocities and treachery are revealed amid the financial manipulation of the Tokyo capital market bubble. Jane finds renewal in an unexpected place. “The anomie of the ex-pat in Japan is captured in ‘Lost in Translation,’ and in this book.” James Fallows, The Atlantic “More twists and turns than a Tokyo alley.” Mary Lord, former Tokyo bureau chief U.S. News & World Report
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Intriguing look at another culture- First, I must state that I’m somewhat biased – I know the author. But this is honestly a good, well-crafted book. It tells the story of Jane, an expatriate American living in Tokyo with her husband in the 1990s. A careerwoman, Jane struggles to find a place for herself in this alien culture. I loved the details such as Jane’s frustration at not even being able to read road signs, and her going into a building by the wrong door. Jane, bright and perceptive, is aware that there are undercurrents…
One Reader’s Opinion Based on the author’s first-hand experiences working on Wall Street and in Japan, this well-crafted novel offers a fascinating peek at Japanese mores and methods of operation. It can be read on more than one level: a murder mystery, the slow disintegration of a marriage, corporate sleaziness in Japan and in American finance, a consular staff that interprets its mission as buttering up the host country rather than helping American citizens, and the personal growth of its woman protagonist. The…
A wonderful read Bitter Tea by Louise Gantress is an enthralling novel on many different levels. The most obvious is her difficulties and loneliness of her heroine, Jane, in dealing with the Japanese culture in which she is submerged, without the support of her husband and how she makes her way as best she can, while dealing with a failing marriage and new insights into who she has been and who she is she emerging as a person. There is both mystery and murder as well as new love. A very engrossing read which I…