Sayonara Bar
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- ¥800
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- ¥800
発行者による作品情報
**Shortlisted for the Authors' Club First Novel Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize**
'Highly original . . . A major achievement by an exciting new author' Independent
'A beautifully written and far-reaching exploration of Japanese culture' Books of the Year, Independent
Mary, a graduate from England, has drifted into a job in a hostess lounge in Osaka. She works for the enigmatic Mama-san and spends her evenings flirting with rich Japanese salarymen, playing drinking games and singing in the karaoke booth. Mary is in love with Yuji, Mama-san's son. But Yuji's loyalty is to the Yakuza gangster for whom he works.
Watanabe, the introverted cook, watches Mary from the kitchen. He exists in his own manga-fuelled fantasy of the fourth dimension, and believes he can see into other people's souls. When he perceives the danger of Mary's growing obsession with Yuji, he resolves to protect her whatever the cost.
Mr Sato works for the Daiwa Trading Corporation. Obsessive overwork cannot cure the emptiness of his solitary life as a salaryman. Lured against his will to the Sayonara Bar by his boss, he finds himself returning there to escape his dead wife's ghost.
Edgy, sly, often very funny, SAYONARA BAR spins a kaleidoscopic, genre-crossing tale of people cut adrift in a globalized world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Barker's piquant debut chronicles the life of Mary, a young Englishwoman working as a hostess at the Sayonara Bar in Osaka, Japan. Though not a prostitute, Mary is paid an hourly wage to flirt and converse with the bar's customers, primarily middle-aged Japanese businessmen. Her colleagues include Katya, a Ukrainian hostess, and Watanabe, the Sayonara's cook, who keeps a watchful eye over Mary and believes that he's an "intermediary between the third and fourth dimension." Barker precisely draws her characters, emphasizing their innermost thoughts and desires. Mr. Sato, a widower, has vivid dreams about his deceased wife even as he's attracted to Mariko, a bar hostess who claims to be conversing with his ghostly wife. As the tension builds among the characters, Yuji, Mary's boyfriend, is caught stealing from his boss. An enigmatic yet riveting climax brings this highly unusual view of Japanese society to a fitting close.
