I Called Him Necktie (Paperback)

from Juva

A beautiful story about suffering and the pressure of society to conform the individual. The narrator is a young man in his twenties who has retreated from the world, never leaving his room. After several years of withdrawal, something pulls him out again. He begins sitting on a bench in a public...

from objectplace

poetic and thoughtful this is a deep emotive read where cause and effect intersect between lives and unfolding stories

from jcbrunner

Having read in an Austrian newspaper the author's nostalgic account of an aged Japanese umbrella shop saleswoman, which isn't a Japanese but a global phenomenon of mom-and-pop stores making way for more efficient forms of retail distribution, I was interested in discovering what the Japanese-Aust...

from banjo123

This is a lovely little book about the power of human connection. The narrator is a Hikikomori. This is a phenomenon in Japan, where youth, mostly young men, refuse to leave their parent's house, shut themselves in their rooms, and reduce contact with the family to a minimum. Length of time varie...

from Erika.D

This was a strange little book. A very short story only about 100 pages long. It started off very slow but something about the characters kept me wanting to get to the end. There is a lot of depressing stuff going on for these characters too. Suicide, death, sadness, loneliness, family issues-all...