My Year of Meats
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4.3 • 7 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
When documentary maker Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, she uncovers some unsavoury truths about love, fertility, and a dangerous hormone called DES. Soon she will also cross paths with Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife struggling to escape her overbearing husband. And the battle with 'big beef' will be on in earnest.
Ruth Ozeki's much-loved debut novel, winner of the Kirayama Prize for Literature of the Pacific Rim, represents the entertaining face of ecological activism. It will delight fans of Michael Pollan, Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver.
Ruth Ozeki was born and raised in Connecticut by an American father and a Japanese mother. She has lived in Japan, where among other things she worked as a bar hostess and studied flower arrangement, Noh drama and mask carving. Ruth practises Zen Buddhism and was ordained as a priest in 2010. She is the bestselling author of My Year of Meats and All Over Creation. Her new book is A Tale for Time Being (2013).
textpublishing.com.au
'Ruth Ozeki masks a deeper purpose a light tone...A comical-satirical-farcical-epical-tragical-romantical novel.' Jane Smiley, Chicago Tribune
'A joy to read.' Elle
'Wonderfully wild and bracing...A feast that leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next.' Newsweek
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Japanese-American documentary filmmaker Jane Takagi Little seems to have found the perfect job producing My American Wife, a program sponsored by American beef exporters that introduces Japanese housewives to "typical, wholesome" American wives, their families and their beef recipes. Jane and her crew travel around the U.S., filming wives and their families as they make beef dinners. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, shy Akiko has been driven to bulimia by her domineering and abusive husband, John, who works with the beef exporters on the show. John insists that Akiko watch the show, cook, gain weight and get pregnant. Over the course of the "year of meats," Jane begins to feel guilty about exploiting the wives, confused about her romantic life and disturbed by the sordid secrets she uncovers about meat production. Inspired by Jane's increasingly subversive episodes (particularly the segment on lesbian vegetarians), Akiko gradually realizes what she wants out of life and finds the courage to reach for it. Narrator Fields gives a sterling performance, vividly bringing to life the many disparate voices from Jane's sharp-tongued mother to the various housewives on the show. Ozeki's prior experience producing similar shows for beef lobbyists and obvious compassion for Jane, combined with Fields's empathetic performance, make this a worthwhile listen. Based on the Viking hardcover.
