'Strangers' by Taichi Yamada

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 208  pages; 2005. (Translated from the Japanese by W.P. Lammers.)

Sometimes you pick up a book and find yourself so lost in the story that whenever you put it down -- if you can put it down -- that you find yourself thinking about it, and counting the hours, minutes, until you can resume reading it again.

When I initially picked up Taichi Yamada's Strangers, a slim volume with slightly too-large print, I had no idea what to expect from it. Little did I know the stranglehold it would have over me for the three days it took me to read. Every time I had to close the book, owing to my deep and abiding need for sleep during a hectic working week, I did so reluctantly. And every morning I'd wake up, a little knot of excitement in my tummy, knowing that this magical, haunting, little book was awaiting my eager eyes.

Paradoxically, as much as I could not wait to reach the final, chilling conclusion, I also did not want the story to end, and I admittedly dragged it out for at least a day longer than was truly necessary.

Strangers is one of those beguiling tales told in simple, hypnotic prose. The first person narrative by 48-year-old Harada, a depressed and slightly jaded TV scriptwriter living in Tokyo, is strangely addictive despite the sometimes clunky sentence structure and the not-quite-right dialogue littered with American slang (perhaps a fault of the translator rather than the author?)