Set My Heart on Fire
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The first novel from Izumi Suzuki to be published in English: a candid, intimate exploration of passion, music and transgression
Hope I’m in for a good time, I thought. Even if it’s just for tonight.
Set in the underground bar and club scene of 1970s Tokyo, Set My Heart On Fire tells the story of Izumi in her turbulent twenties. Through a series of disarmingly frank vignettes, author Izumi Suzuki presents an unforgettable portrait of a young woman encountering missteps and miscommunication, good music and unreliable men, powerful drugs and disorientating meds. Izumi usually keeps her relationships short but complicated, until she meets Jun.
Set My Heart on Fire is a visceral novel about mistaken relationships and the convolutions of desire, about regret and acceptance. Pulsing through the narration is the protagonist’s love of music, a vital soundtrack spanning the Zombies, T. Rex and the Rolling Stones as well as underground Japanese psychedelic-rock bands such as the Tigers and the Tempters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Suzuki (Terminal Boredom) delivers an alluring if uneven tale of sex, drugs, and music. The action opens in 1973, when narrator Izumi is 23 years old and immersed in a drug- and sex-filled underground music scene in Tokyo. Izumi, a former model and occasional writer, is portrayed as sensual and nihilistic, addicted to pills and sex ("Each night I gave myself up to those white pills. Or into the arms of a man. I just wanted to be held by something"). At first, the narrative is as aimless as she is. The first half is bogged down by a repetitive succession of Izumi's dialogues with her friends and lovers—centered largely on music, romantic interests, and casual philosophizing. It is only when Izumi meets Jun, the unstable free jazz musician who soon becomes her husband, that Suzuki finds her footing, and the second half is lifted by the penetrating and beautiful story of Izumi and Jun's catastrophic marriage, along with her longing for the halcyon days of her youth, which leads to a profoundly bittersweet conclusion. Despite the bumpy ride, there's a sustained appeal in the novel's hard-up glamor.
