AMERICAN FUJI

Sara Backer has created an intricate plot that revolves around the death of an American student while studying abroad in Japan. His father travels to a small Japanese town to find out the details of his son's death. Things are revealed which do not match up and the father is thrown into an investigation to discover the facts surrounding this death. The problems begin to mount when an American woman is pulled into the middle of the investigation against her better judgement. The problems become even larger when the cultural differences come into play.
A difference in attitudes towards death, towards open expression of emotion and individualism are so wide apart as to appear insurmountable. The difference in the style of daily living, the cuisine and even the written language pose their own problems.
Sara Backer bases the novel on her experiences while she was a visiting professor at Shizuoka University. The cultural differences are handled with both seriousness and humor to make for an interesting look at life as a foreigner in small town Japan.
American Fuji is also the story of a search for love, acceptance and understanding and what people are willing to trade to gain a firmer footing in these emotional arenas.
I found the de*ion of Mount Fuji wonderfully accurate, including the climb. The thoughts that arise are some of the same thoughts I had when I climbed it. It was both majestic and spiritual just as she writes, it was also a lot more difficult than it looked to be.
This was a great story told by a very talented author about love, life and a cultural gap that can not always be bridged.
 

Expect the unexpected.This is Japan.That's Gaby Stanton speaking,trying to explain to Alex Thorn why his questions about the mysterious death of his son,an exchange student at a small Japanese university,are likely to go unanswered.But those words could also serve as the leitmotif for this exuberantly funny tale of Americans abroad in modern-day Japan.
After five years in Japan,Gaby herself has learned to expect the unexpected.Fired for no reason from ger university position,she has taken the only job avail-able to her:selling fantasy funerals to Japanese clients.And because the firm she works for shipped Cody Thorn's body back to the States,his father has turned up on her doorstep looking for answers.What ensues is a Wild ride through the manners,mores,and prejudices of the Japanese.
Peopled with a cast of ill-assorted exiles from the West and with Japanese From all walks of life,American Fuji is many novels in one:a teasing mystery,a quest that is alternately tender and slapstick,an irrever-ent tale of cross-cultural misadventure,and a sophisticated romantic comedy.It is indeed about expecting the unexpected in a land where appearances are not all they seem to be.

Sara Backer is a poet,essayist,short fic-tion writer-and now,a novelist of formi-dable powers,as American Fuji amply demonstrates.In the early 1990s,she accepted a position as visiting professor of English at Shizulka University,unaware that she was not o