Review

The Earthquake Bird

By Susanna Jones

Published by Picador

This short novel is narrated by Lucy Fry, a young Englishwoman working as a translator in modern Tokyo.

By page three, Lucy has been arrested - at work, humiliatingly - suspected of the murder of her English friend Lily, a bartender.

A neon-lit interrogation by two desultory police officers is interrupted by Lucy's memories and flashbacks. She struggles to piece together her relationship with Lily - who shared Lucy's Yorkshire roots - and the part played in the events leading up to her murder by Lucy's strange Japanese boyfriend Teiji, who has since disappeared.

Lucy's thought processes reveal an increasingly fractured and alienated personality perfectly framed by the 'Blade Runner' backdrop, neatly supplied by the Japanese capital at night, rocked by regular and alarming earthquake tremors.

She charts her obsessive interest in Teiji, who spends his waking hours taking photographs that he never displays or shows anyone; describes her odd family background and her escape to a self-imposed exile in Japan; and reveals a disturbingly clumsy manner that brings about the death of family members and friends alike.

The story is told exclusively from Lucy's perspective; a lonely and awkward girl, she has been scarred by an abnormally normal life and the jealous need to be loved. Is she responsible for Lily's death? Innocent until proven guilty, the reader becomes increasingly suspicious as the confused confession slips from first-person I to third-person Lucy.

First published in 2001, The Earthquake Bird won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. This is an absorbing and touching book, and, especially for any westerner who has experienced modern Japan, is heartily recommended.

Reviewed by Huw Molseed

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