A bittersweet tale, I was charmed. ( )

I normally wouldn't have picked out this book, but some things just happen. It all started when the other day while driving in the city, I overheard someone on the radio reading from a novel (they do this on national radio here). It was just a brief passage somewhere in the middle of the story, and there was nothing significant going on, but there was something seductive about it -- I guess it was the implied consciousness of the first-person account. A few days later, I looked up the rad...more I normally wouldn't have picked out this book, but some things just happen. It all started when the other day while driving in the city, I overheard someone on the radio reading from a novel (they do this on national radio here). It was just a brief passage somewhere in the middle of the story, and there was nothing significant going on, but there was something seductive about it -- I guess it was the implied consciousness of the first-person account. A few days later, I looked up the radio schedule on the Internet and found the name of the book: *'Tuvalu'*, by Andrew O'Connor. Then a week or so after that I happened to be in the university book store here, and thought I'd check their fiction shelves. They had a copy of it. Once I started reading it – it's a story about an
alienated young Westerner living in Japan – I immediately found myself lured into the same narrative rhythm that had hooked me earlier while listening to the radio.

It didn't let me down, either. This is destined to become a
classic eventually – an absolute must read. ( )