Popular Hits of the Showa Era
From the author of Audition, a wickedly satirical and wildly funny tale of an intergenerational battle of the sexes.In his most irreverent novel yet, Ryu Murakami creates a rivalry of epic proportions between six aimless youths and six tough-as-nails women who battle for control of a Tokyo...
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From the author of Audition, a wickedly satirical and wildly funny tale of an intergenerational battle of the sexes.In his most irreverent novel yet, Ryu Murakami creates a rivalry of epic proportions between six aimless youths and six tough-as-nails women who battle for control of a Tokyo neighborhood. At the outset, the young men seem louche but harmless, their activities limited to drinking, snacking, peering at a naked neighbor through a window, and performing karaoke. The six "aunties" are fiercely independent career women. When one of the boys executes a lethal ambush of one of the women, chaos ensues. The women band together to find the killer and exact revenge. In turn, the boys buckle down, study physics, and plot to take out their nemeses in a single blast. Who knew that a deadly "gang war" could be such fun? Murakami builds the conflict into a hilarious, spot-on satire of modern culture and the tensions between the sexes and generations.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780393338423 (0393338428)
ASIN: 393338428
Publish date: January 31st 2011
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pages no: 192
Edition language: English
Category:
Humor,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Literary Fiction,
Adult,
Mystery,
Contemporary,
Asian Literature,
Crime,
Japan,
Japanese Literature
I can't imagine what it must be like to always be in the shadow of your namesake. Haruki Murakami, famous novelist, has indeed somewhat eclipsed the literary career of Ryu Murakami, although this is in no means a statement of quality. Apart from the fact that they are both Japanese people named Mura...
a weak spot from an otherwise consistently good author, Popular Hits seems to draw from a weak conception/premise, "what if 5 socially geeky boys fought 5 middle-aged used-up women." although containing steady escalation of firepower, no real urgency/connection to social problems and/or sympathy inv...
This book is awesome!I picked it up expecting a daft switch-off read, and that's exactly what I was provided with, and a whole lot more :-)Best way to describe it:The only other Ryū Murakami book I read was Piercing, which is more of an intimate psychological study, whereas this book is clearly over...
I never would have thought so just by looking at it, but I believe this is what I've been looking for. It's offbeat and familiar and hideous and alluring in perfect balance. It's the literary love of my life.When I showed Scott Fitzgerald the divorce papers, he was like "Really, Katie? For a 200-pa...
The Book Report: Six dreadfully bored, dreadfully sociopathic young twentysomething men find each other, and for want of anything better to do, start hanging out. They drink, they eat, they talk at but not to each other, and no one bothers to listen because no one has anything to say that means any-...