Toraware by Robert W. NorrisGenre: Literary drama
Price: $2.50
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The year is 1983. The place is the Kobe-Osaka area. A 33-year-old American drifter and Vietnam War veteran has just arrived in Japan seeking one more adventure and an escape from his past. A promiscuous, rebellious, 23-year-old Japanese woman has just returned from a two-year homestay in a Canadian mission, where she was sent by her parents to cure her suicidal behavior. A snobbish, upper-class, 22-year-old Japanese woman who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality is about to graduate from university and enter the frightening world of adulthood. Three people searching for a place to belong. Three people dancing on a psychological highwire. Three people about to become enmeshed in a relationship that will change each of their lives forever. "Toraware" takes a penetrating look at the obsessions, suspense, grief, misunderstandings, and joys of people from very different cultures and backgrounds who are brought together by fate to find the separate life paths they must follow.
What they're saying about it:
"Crafted in excellent style and patiently honed.... The Japanese characters are wholly convincing.... The ambivalence and spiritual guilt of Yoshiko, one of the tragic heroines of 'Toraware,' about an abortion she underwent years ago, is perfectly captured.... [Norris has] captured the unassuagable melancholy at the deepest core of the Japanese soul [and] succeeded in convincing us of the reality of [his] vision." -- Kansai Time Out Magazine
"'Toraware' goes beyond the 'gaijin' experience.... [Norris] manages to evoke the rootlessness felt by young Japanese uncertain about their future." -- The Japan Times
Autumn Shadows in August by Robert W. NorrisGenre: Literary drama
Price: $2.50
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Modeled roughly on Malcolm Lowry's "Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid, " this novel is part homage to Lowry and Hermann Hesse, part mushroom retrospective, and part middle-aged love story. David Thompson is an expatriate American teaching at a Japanese university and suffering from hepatitis C. His wife Kaori is recovering from cancer surgery. Feeling a strong sense of their own mortality, confusion about the significance of what they have done with their lives, and a need to escape the constrictions of their life in Japan, the two set out on a journey to Europe to retrace a path from David's adventurous youth and locate a German benefactor from the past. What lies ahead -- a trip through the Magic Theater, a sudden death, an encounter with Lowry's ghost, and a descent into the Capuchin Crypt in Rome -- will change their lives irrevocably.
What they're saying about it:
"'Autumn Shadows In August' is an engaging and entertaining novel…very strongly recommended for all general fiction readers for its evocative telling and unique style and presentation of a timeless tale…an overall remarkable story." -- Midwest Book Review
"'Autumn Shadows in August' is a journey in miles and of states of mind. The reader travels through Europe with an American expatriate who recapitulates his past in a transcendental and evocative fashion. Along this mind-expanding sojourn, we also travel over the Khyber Pass from Afghanistan and into India, where the protagonist's life is transformed. 'Autumn Shadows in August' is an insightful and very enjoyable read. I'm glad I went along on this personal journey." -- David Echt, author of "Messenger from the Summer of Love"
Looking for the Summer by Robert W. NorrisGenre: Literary, historical
Price: $2.50
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David Thompson is a former Vietnam War conscientious objector in Paris on a quest to find himself in the early days of 1977. When he befriends an Iranian and an Afghan and is invited to return with them to their countries, his quest slowly becomes a descent into his own private hell.
On the road from Europe to the East, he encounters Kurdish bandits in the eastern mountains of Turkey, becomes involved with an underground group opposed to the Shah in Iran, escapes to Afghanistan, passes through Pakistan during the uprising against the Bhutto regime, and suffers extreme sickness on the streets of Delhi and Calcutta. Although continually searching for the happiness and identity he could not find in the U.S., he cannot easily shed his American past. Throughout the journey he is hounded by the demons of memory, particularly that of his father, a World War II hero who disowned David and died while David was still in prison. The journey itself becomes a physical manifestation of his struggle to achieve reconciliation with his own conscience.
What they're saying about it:
"A graceful autobiographical novel that breathes life into a perennial genre: the spiritual 'bildungsroman.' The theme of a questing expatriate who renounces Western materialism in favor of an exotic pilgrimage to the East will be familiar to anyone who has fallen under the spell of W. Somerset Maugham's 'The Razor's Edge' or Jack Kerouac's 'The Dharma Bums'...
Although published prior to the events of 9/11, it is impossible to pick up Norris's novel without a heightened interest in its vividly depicted locales in a part of the world where our attentions are now so intensely focused. Several fascinating chapters are devoted to [the protagonist's] stay in Afghanistan. Written with a novelist's eye for characterization and a reporter's skill for observation, 'Looking for the Summer' is the kind of small press gem that is often overlooked but is well worth seeking out." -- Bob Wake, CultureVulture.net
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